U.S. Tanker Seizure Has Paralyzed Venezuela’s Oil Business—Except Chevron’s

Vessels are idling at ports or veering away from the region. But for Chevron, it’s business as usual.

Chevron stands as one of the last big shippers of Venezuelan oil after the U.S. seized a sanctioned tanker last week allegedly carrying the country’s crude to the black market.

A Chevron-chartered oil tanker in Venezuela.

The threat of another U.S. seizure has disrupted the country’s usually bustling traffic of dark-fleet vessels ferrying the Latin American country’s oil to China and Cuba. Several tankers are idling at Venezuelan ports and others are veering away from the region, vessel-tracking data show.

President Trump on Tuesday ordered a complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela, escalating his administration’s pressure campaign against strongman Nicolás Maduro.

For Chevron, though, it remains business as usual. The company is still sending oil tankers to the U.S. Gulf Coast, its operations unimpeded thus far by rising tension between Trump and Maduro.

The day after U.S. forces captured the dark-fleet supertanker Skipper, two vessels carrying crude for Chevron departed from the Bajo Grande, a port on Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo, both bound for the U.S., according to data from TankerTrackers.com.

A Chevron spokesman said its operations in Venezuela continue without disruption and in compliance with the law. He called the company’s presence in Venezuela a stabilizing force for the local economy and directed questions about the security situation to U.S. officials.

“They’ve stuck with the Venezuelan market through thick and thin, and endured a lot of adverse conditions, a lot of headwinds,” said Clay Seigel, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Chevron, in a way, is punching above its weight in terms of contributing to the future of Venezuela.”

Chevron has long faced criticism for operating in Venezuela but has shown remarkable staying power in the country, where it has had a presence for more than 100 years. Its operations, according to its critics, redound to the benefit of Maduro, whom the U.S. has accused of leading a drug-trafficking cartel and whose regime runs on oil revenue.

Under Chevron’s license to operate in Venezuela, about half the oil it and state-run PdVSA pump goes to Maduro’s government, which then tries to monetize it by selling the crude to China or Cuba using a shadow fleet. The U.S. has sanctions in place that prohibit companies from trading Venezuelan oil; Chevron’s license is essentially an exception to the rule.

In an interview at a WSJ event earlier this month, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said the rules Chevron operates under don’t allow the company to pay Venezuela taxes or royalties with the revenue it generates from crude sales.

“They’re very restrictive in terms of what we can do,” he said.

Chevron and its joint ventures, which employ about 3,000 people, operate in the country’s Orinoco Belt, rich in heavy oil. The output from those fields has risen to about 300,000 barrels a day since the Biden administration granted Chevron a license to resume operations there in late 2022. That represents about one-third of Venezuela’s total oil production—and less than 10% of Chevron’s global output.

If Venezuela’s sanctioned oil traffic is stalled for long, a major revenue stream for Maduro would dry up. Crude sales have long represented more than 90% of Venezuela’s export income.

“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump said Tuesday on X. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before—until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us.”

Evanan Romero, a Houston-based energy consultant and former Venezuelan deputy oil minister, said an oil blockade would spell the end of Maduro’s regime.

“If you’ve already cut the narco revenue and then you get rid of the oil, we’re talking about the final collapse. If you’re capturing ships, then these guys have days left,” said Romero, who is advising opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on an oil-sector recovery plan.

U.S. officials have said there would be more ship seizures in a bid to force Maduro from power, an effort that has involved a massive military buildup in the Caribbean. Trump has said Maduro’s “days are numbered,” though he hasn’t publicly committed to a next course of action.

Maduro called last week’s tanker seizure an act of naval piracy by the U.S. The White House said it targeted the Guyana-flagged Skipper because it was sanctioned for its involvement in the shipping of Iranian crude.

Seven other oil tankers in Venezuela’s Port José and the Port of Amuay have idled for nearly a week since the seizure, according to vessel tracker Samir Madani at TankerTrackers.com.

Other oil supertankers are giving Venezuela a wide berth. Five inbound ships turned around and headed for ports elsewhere in the past four to five days, the data show. One was carrying Russian naphtha—a diluent Venezuela uses to mix with heavy oil—to the South American country when it turned tail in the Indian Ocean; the others were empty.

Analysts said Maduro’s cash flow has already taken a hit because it has had to offer discounts for its crude. Venezuela exported almost 800,000 barrels a day between Sept. 1 and Dec. 15, with about 81% going to China, 17% to the U.S. and about 2% to Cuba, TankerTrackers.com data show.

Maduro’s regime, however, has survived harsher conditions in the past. During the Covid-19 pandemic, prices for Venezuela’s heavy crude sank to a fraction of today’s prices, and the country’s oil output collapsed to less than half its current level. Yet Maduro held on.

“It’s an escalation that, if it becomes a pattern, it could significantly impact Venezuela,” said Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin America energy program at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “This is not the worst pressure Maduro has faced—at least not yet.”

Write to Collin Eaton at collin.eaton@wsj.com, Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com and Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com