Banned at sea: Venezuela’s oil tankers
houston/punto fijo — In the scorching heat of the Caribbean Sea, workers in scuba suits scrub crude oil by hand from the hull of the Caspian Galaxy, a tanker so filthy it can’t set sail in international waters.
The vessel is among many that are constantly contaminated at two major export terminals where they load crude from Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA. The water here has an oily sheen from leaks in the rusty pipelines under the surface.
That means the tankers have to be cleaned before travelling to many foreign ports, which won’t admit crude-stained ships for fear of environmental damage to their harbours, port facilities or other vessels.
The laborious hand-cleaning operation is one of many causes of chronic delays for dozens of tankers that deliver Venezuela’s principle export to customers worldwide. Other reasons include delayed repairs and impoundments by service providers that are owed money by cash-strapped PDVSA.
The tankers sidelined for cleaning provide a vivid example of the firm’s downward spiral: Lacking the cash to properly maintain ships, refineries and production operations — or to pay business partners on time — PDVSA can’t boost exports, which is its only option for raising more cash.
The lagging exports crimp the flow of cash back to the country’s crippled socialist economy, as citizens struggle daily amid soaring inflation and shortages of food and medicine. Because Venezuela relies on oil for more than 90 per cent of export revenues, the problems of its state-run oil company pose a national crisis.
Venezuela’s crude exports declined eight per cent to 1.69 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first quarter versus the same period in 2016, according to Thomson Reuters data.
When oil prices were high, crude and fuel exports entirely financed an elaborate system of government price controls and social subsidies that maintained the popularity of late President Hugo Chavez.
Although embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro insists the government has maintained social programmes, he has publicly acknowledged that lower oil prices have left the government with less money to finance them.
At oil export terminals around the world, an oil-stained tanker would normally be taken out of the water and cleaned with industrial equipment in a dry dock.
But Venezuela has just one small dry dock and lacks the cash or the time to send its soiled tankers there for proper cleaning. So workers on a small fishing boat clean the giant tanker with thousands of scrub-brush strokes. The work — which involves scouring ships above and below the water line — can take up to 10 days per vessel, a worker involved in the cleaning said.
In a scene witnessed by Reuters in April, workers wearing scuba suits baked on the deck of a small boat as they reached out with brushes to scrub the Caspian Galaxy, a tanker leased for one trip by a PDVSA customer.
The workers laboured just offshore from Amuay beach, near a tourist hub and PDVSA’s largest refinery. The crews here have washed so many vessels in recent months that they have dubbed their operation “the boatwash”.
PDVSA’s maritime crisis is uniquely dire, said George Los, a senior tanker market analyst at US ship brokerage Charles R. Weber Company. “I can’t think of any situation similar to this anywhere else in the world right now,” he said.
Eighteen of the 31 oil tankers PDVSA owns were out of commission at the end of March, according to Thomson Reuters vessel-tracking data and six maritime industry employees. Several needed cleaning, while others need repairs, according to the data.
To keep oil flowing, PDVSA leases more than 50 tankers — each at a cost of between $800,000 to $1 million per month, according to three captains and ship brokers involved in lease contracts with PDVSA and Thomson Reuters vessel tracking data.
That is more than double the number of vessels it typically leases to complement its own fleet of tankers, according to the sources.
It’s a short-term fix that is driving up costs and exposing PDVSA to further detentions or seizures of vessels when it does not pay leasing fees on time. — Reuters