Oil Tanker Venezuela Venezuela’s financial problems have become so acute that it is having trouble paying for the crude oil imports that it needs. Reuters reports that four oil tankers carrying more than 2 million barrels of oil are sitting off the Venezuelan coast because the state-owned oil company has not paid for the cargoes yet. Venezuela, despite sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves and having membership in OPEC, still needs to import lighter forms of oil in order to dilute its very heavy crude. The state-owned PDVSA, however, is in a state of financial crisis, as is the state itself. According to Reuters, PDVSA has not paid BP for the oil shipments, which have been sent from the U.S., preventing them from docking at Venezuelan ports. Three BP tankers have been sitting at sea for over a month. Separately, other oil tankers have been backed up at […]