U.S. oil refiners, once highly dependent on oil imports from Venezuela, have had to adjust and find their oil elsewhere.
By Thomas Heath Thomas Heath Local business reporter and columnist, writing about entrepreneurs and companies in the Washington metropolitan area Email Bio Follow April 30 at 3:52 PM Venezeula has more oil beneath it than any other country on the planet, but it has so mismanaged its resource that it could take years to return to being a leading energy exporter — even if it started fixing things today.
Benchmark West Texas Intermediate jumped 61 cents, about 1 percent, to $64.07. Brent Crude climbed more than 1 percent to nearly $73 per barrel. Oil prices have risen 60 percent this year. Blackouts, unrest and other factors limited production to as low as 600,000 barrels a day in March. The national oil company, known as Petroleos de Venezuela , rallied and produced an average of 780,000 barrels per day, according to an analyst.
“The missing Venezuelan supply is what is enabling Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members to tighten up global supplies and push prices considerably higher,” said John Kilduff of Again Capital. President Trump is fueling the uncertainty in oil markets as the U.S. pressures big oil consumers like China, India, South Korea and Turkey to stop buying Iranian oil. The Iran sanctions were imposed last fall, but Trump granted waivers to several countries, allowing them to continue buying Iranian crude. At the time, he was using Twitter messages to urge OPEC, and Saudi Arabia in particular, to pump more oil so that oil prices would stay affordable.
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