The sanctions, which the department said were imposed in response to the recent arrests of Venezuelan National Assembly members, were imposed on Marshall Islands-based Monsoon Navigation, the registered owner of the elderly Aframax ‘Ocean Elegance’ and Liberia-based Serenity Maritime, the registered owner of 2008-built Handysize chemical/products tanker ‘Leon Dias’.
US officials claimed that the ‘Ocean Elegance’ and ‘Leon Dias’ delivered crude from Venezuela to Cuba from late 2018 through March, 2019.
“The US will take further action if Cuba continues to receive Venezuelan oil in exchange for military support,” US Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said in a statement. “As we have repeatedly said, the path to sanctions relief for those who have been sanctioned is to take concrete and meaningful actions to restore democratic order.”
The US is also considering secondary sanctions on Venezuela, which would prohibit all crude and product trade with PDVSA, sources told S&P Platts.
If imposed, these sanctions would cause Venezuelan crude output to fall to 500,000 barrels per day by the fourth quarter of 2019 and to 375,000 barrels per day by the end of 2020, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.
Without secondary sanctions being applied, Platts forecast Venezuelan crude supply to fall from 825,000 barrels per day in May to 675,000 barrels per day by December.