A bottleneck of vessels waiting to load crude and fuel in Venezuela has increased in recent weeks as PDVSA struggles to deliver cargoes on time, according to Reuters.

• At least 19 supertankers were waiting to load near Venezuela’s Jose and Amuay ports. This compares to around 12 in November.
• Some tankers, mainly bound for India, Malaysia, and China, have been waiting since December.
• There are also cargoes bound for the US which are facing delays, but wait times are shorter than for Asia-bound cargoes.
• PDVSA’s crude storage as Jose rose to 6.8m bbl, compared to 5.32m bbl at the end of Jan. Inventories of diluents declined, however.
• PDVSA has been trying to ramp up shipments in Feb, amid setbacks in January caused by outages at Venezuela’s main port.
• However, this has not been enough to ease the backlog of vessels.