No. of Recommendations: 11
China gets oil…at a higher price than the off-market rates they were paying to Maduro to buy his bootleg oil.
So yes. Their nuts, our rope.By enough to matter? Per the article, the oil is apparently still being offered at off-market rates:
The trader offered a cargo at a discount of $8-$8.50 a barrel to ICE Brent on a delivered basis to one [potential buyer], one of the sources said.That is a bit of a haircut off what they were getting previously, which was about $13-15 per barrel:
Chinese buyers shunned offers for Venezuelan crude this week, as a US blockade on the South American producer constrains exports and pushes up prices.
Venezuela’s Merey crude was offered at a discount of $13 a barrel to ICE Brent, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is not public. That compares with a discount of as much as $15 a month ago, prior to the US campaign on sanctioned tankers.https://archive.ph/el91S...but not really enough to matter. $5-7 per barrel cost increase? That's well below a single billion dollars for the entire year for all of China's imports from Venezuela. A rounding error - chump change. Not exactly having their nuts in a rope.
