Squeeze of Venezuela’s oil sector: A throwback to US Cold war enforcer role?
In what is seen in some quarters as an extension of the United States’ ‘friends and foes’ foreign policy posture towards Latin American and Caribbean nations arising out of their respective perceived political postures, companies involved in the business of transporting oil from producing countries to markets across the world are now coming under unmistakable and aggressive pressure to steer clear of doing business with the South American oil giant, Venezuela.
Seemingly by the edict of the US foreign policy choreographers in Washington, vessels involved in moving Venezuela’s oil to markets are now being openly designated as “rogue tankers” for the reason that they help frustrate the Trump administration’s efforts to build financial pressure on the administration in Caracas to demit office.
The imposition of such ‘sanctions’, as they are called, are heavily supported by data gleaned from mandatory tracking systems which vessels are obliged to deploy and which, a recent report says, has identified two hundred and fourteen (214) vessels that have visited Venezuela in the year since US sanctions were imposed.
The so-called rogue tankers would appear to be cashing in on the gaps in the oil transportation sector arising out of
Washington’s success in frightening off the established players in the shipping industry from transacting business with Venezuela’s oil industry. “New players are willing to brave the heightened risks and help keep socialist leader Nicholas Maduro afloat,” according to an Economic Times (ET) Energyworld.com report earlier this week.
Trump’s ‘beef’ with the Maduro administration is primarily ideological and is hinged to claims of fraud at Venezuela’s last general elections, an issue that has become increasingly controversial given the crushing socio-economic impact that the sanctions have had on the now crisisridden Venezuela.
ET’s Energyworld.com reports that while US pressure has succeeded in frightening off tanker activity by the established oil companies, what it describes as “less scrupulous carriers” are reportedly filling the void. Those ships are reportedly responsible for 33% of all maritime traffic since the US banned Americans from business transactions with Venezuela’s oil sector in January last year. The report says that almost half of those vessels were visiting Venezuela for the first time.
Over time and in pursuit of its mission to deny the Maduro administration access to earnings from its huge oil reserves, Washington has sanctioned more than fifty (50) vessels found to have violated the ‘sanctions’, Energyworld.com reports. In the process the exercise has become transformed into an ideological confrontation with Russia, China, and more recently Iran, stepping in to support the beleaguered administration in Caracas.
However, with its typical aplomb, the US government has reacted by issuing new “guidelines” that call on the global maritime industry to “beef up its vigilance for sanctions-busting activity on the high seas.” While (as reported recently in the Stabroek Business) hemispheric giant Brazil has bowed to US wishes that the country not do business with sanctionsbreaking oil tankers, the Caribbean, notwithstanding what undoubtedly is its recognition of the throwback to the late 20th century US proclivity for throwing its weight around in the region, have steered clear of commenting on the continually mounting US pressures on Venezuela.
For the so-called rogue vessels prepared to run the risk of ‘crossing’ Washington, the rewards can be considerable. It means that they have developed methods of trying to evade detection, one of which is to ‘go dark’ by turning off their transponders in order to hide the tankers filled with Venezuelan crude. They are also prepared to run what can be the considerable risk of unloading their cargo through ship-to-ship transfers in order to make it more difficult for the US authorities
to track their ultimate destination.
It is not always easy to determine the extent to which this US method of strangling the Venezuelan economy works. While the sanctions reduce the volume of port calls of ships working with the Venezuelan authorities, the so called ‘dark voyage’ activities and countries like China, India, and Cuba, reportedly remain willing ports of call for ships carrying crude from Venezuela. All of this is based on satellite-tracking data reportedly provided by an Israeli maritime analytics firm.
Articles emanating mostly from the US that ‘crunch the numbers’ as far as ships involved in the clandestine movement of Venezuelan crude is concerned, (a pursuit which is reportedly supported by Israeli tracking technology) and which has been able to provide information on both the number of ships that have worked with the Venezuelan oil industry since the imposition of the sanctions and the names of the companies that own the vessels, have been able to allow Washington to specifically target its sanctions against ‘transgressors’.
The Trump administration has, however, studiously avoided the implications of Washington’s posture for the fate of an already battered nation and for the longterm stability of the hemisphere, a consideration which, watchers believe, the US is leaving up to its hegemonic wiles to deal with.