In recent years, Venezuela’s proven oil storage capacity has reached 296 billion barrels. Therefore, the country is also known as a “winner” player and has the largest amount of oil in the world. A country with oil reserves.
However, the good times did not last long. With the country’s oil exports already sluggish, on January 28, 2019, the United States also announced sanctions on the Venezuelan state oil company (PDVSA).
However, even under the US ban, Venezuelan suppliers are finding ways to ship millions of barrels of oil to the Chinese market. According to reports on January 22, Venezuela, with the help of Swiss oil trading company Swissoil Trading, tried every means to conceal the origin of oil and exported at least 11.3 million barrels of oil to China in 2020.
So, why does Venezuela insist on exporting oil to China? Analysts believe that there are at least two major reasons behind this.
First, as mentioned above, although Venezuela is the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, its oil export industry has suffered a huge blow due to the US ban and other factors. In addition, due to years of poor management, the country’s oil exports have become increasingly difficult during the epidemic. Therefore, Venezuelan oil suppliers urgently need to explore international markets to reduce losses.
Second, as the world’s largest oil demander, strong demand from Chinese buyers is crucial to the hard-hit Venezuelan oil extraction industry. Data show that in the first 11 months of 2020, my country imported 503.92 million tons of crude oil, with a total import volume of US$163.868 billion (approximately RMB 1.06 trillion).
It is worth mentioning that our country has also made criticisms about the United States’ actions against Venezuela. According to reports, a Chinese spokesperson stated that my country firmly opposes the United States’ abuse of unilateral sanctions and other means to coerce the Venezuelan people to change their development path. At the same time, my country will take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of its own enterprises and ensure relevant legal trade activities between China and Venezuela.
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