Sanctions squeeze Venezuela's heavy crude output

Latin America's economically troubled oil giant faces the difficult task of significantly raising Asian crude grades

Venezuela's upgraders have been forced to stop upgrading extra-heavy crude and instead focus on blending light and heavy grades, as US sanctions limit exports of the South American country's most valuable oil. US sanctions related to the country's political crisis have debilitated Venezuela's access to synthetic crude export markets, prompting Pdvsa, the state-owned oil company, to substitute it for greater volumes of the 16 ºAPI Merey blend preferred in Asia, which is now Venezuela’s key export market. Pdvsa has begun the process by converting its Petropiar joint venture upgrader (Chevron 30pc) into a blender capable of processing extra-heavy Orinoco crude with light crude—outputting Merey