Venezuela's aging oil port facilities are effectively limiting how much crude the country can export, with tankers facing waits of as long as 30 days to load due to old equipment, blackouts, and oil quality problems.
Ship tracking data indicates that PDVSA and its partners have not been able to exceed 1.25 million barrels per day in exports recently, even though crude output has been increasing.
The congestion is apparent from the many tankers waiting at anchorages, especially near the Jose port on Venezuela's northeastern coast, which is responsible for roughly 70% of the nation's total exports.
PDVSA is increasingly facing thousands of dollars in demurrage fees—a penalty for each day a tanker waits past its scheduled loading time—and it has agreed to settle these charges only with crude oil.