Message Board Archives

There are re­ports of T&T ports be­ing used by Venezuela’s state oil com­pa­ny, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), to avoid US sanc­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port on the web­site Lloyd’s List Mar­itime In­tel­li­gence, ships ap­pear to be col­lect­ing oil car­go in Venezuela be­fore stop­ping off in T&T and then set­ting off again, rais­ing sus­pi­cions that car­goes are be­ing hid­den. It said PDVSA is sus­pect­ed of us­ing co-loads and “false berthings” to dis­guise car­go ori­gins.

Since March 21, three tankers be­long­ing to PDVSA have loaded oil car­goes in Venezuela then di­vert­ed to ar­eas close to T&T for sev­er­al hours. Ves­sel-track­ing da­ta showed that af­ter spend­ing a short time in T&T wa­ters, the tankers left for their fi­nal long-haul des­ti­na­tions.

This was like­ly an at­tempt to get new bills of lad­ing stat­ing T&T, not Venezuela as the points of ori­gin for the car­goes of fu­el oil.

The tankers have been iden­ti­fied as the Min­doro, Amore Mio and Serengeti. Min­doro is owned by TMS Tankers, while Serengeti is owned by a Greece-based ship­ping com­pa­ny, Dy­na­com. The own­er of Amore Mio could not be de­ter­mined.

“There is no sug­ges­tion that any of the ship­ments were in breach of US sanc­tions,” Mar­itime In­tel­li­gence added.