Venezuela had lost some of its biggest oil customers following Washington's recent sanctions on its oil exports. However, some customers still remain, shipping millions of barrels of the country's oil each year. India is one of those customers, with an appetite that has seemingly only grown over the past months.
According to data from shipping and oil industry sources, the amount of oil India had shipped from Venezuela has apparently reached more than 475,200 barrels per day (bpd) in June.
This was double the amount of oil imports when compared to the previous month. The figure is reportedly the highest amount of oil shipped by the country in over 21 months.
Earlier in the year, the United States had imposed strict sanctions on Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA as a measure to put added pressure on the country's socialist leader, President Nicolas Maduro.
The sanctions had driven away most of the country's foreign customers and operators, leaving the country with unmanned refineries and billions of dollars in losses.
Despite the sanctions, India still continues to ship Venezuelan oil as it had closed a term deal with PDVSA years before the US had imposed its restrictions on the company. Venezuela currently only has two Indian customers, namely private refiners Nayara Energy and Reliance Industries.
Apart from buying directly from the PDVSA, the two Indian refiners also purchase their crude from Russia's Rosneft. The Russian oil company still imports oil from Venezuela as part of its deal for the country to pay back its debt.
Venezuela currently owes a debt to Russia due to a $16 billion loan it had taken out in 2006. Venezuela has been slowly paying its debt to Russia with oil shipments.
Last month, Reliance Industries received around 1 million tons of oil from Venezuela as part of its 15-year deal with PDVSA. Meanwhile, Nayara Energy receives around 940,000 tons of oil from the country.
The amount of oil that was imported from Venezuela increased by 54 percent for the month of June compared to the same month last year. For the first half of the year, India's oil imports from Venezuela surged by around 11 percent or 357,000 bpd.
While it still continues to buy oil from Venezuela, India has respected the United States' sanctions against Iran. India halted its Iranian oil imports in May after the US' waiver for Iranian oil buyers had expired. The increase of India's oil imports from Venezuela has, for the most part, managed to compensate for the loss of supply from the Iranian ban.
