Venezuela crude quality shifting: VLO

摘要

Crude volumes remain steady out of Venezuela but the quality of the exports has shifted amid electrical and economic woes, Valero said this week. Daily rolling blackouts for up to 12 hours in some parts of the country in response to a drought-inflicted shortage of hydropower have affected upgraders used to produce synthetic crude from the country’s bitumen production. So while Valero was seeing the same volume of available crude from Venezuela, more of it was blended instead of synthetic, said Gary Simmons, Valero’s vice president of supply on a conference call to discuss first quarter earnings. “Our system is robust enough to be able to absorb that, so we buy those barrels and continue to run them in our system,” Simmons said.