Venezuelan PDVSA’s U.S. refining unit Citgo Petroleum is increasing its efforts to buy crude oil on the open market to compensate for declining supplies from its parent, which is dealing with a severe tanker backlog, traders said on Monday. Citgo has a 273,000-barrels per day (bpd) contract to import Venezuelan Merey crude from PDVSA, but the parent company has not sent a single cargo of that grade in over a month, forcing its subsidiary to buy spot cargoes of diluted crude oil (DCO) from PDVSA’s joint ventures, according to traders and Reuters data. “They are mainly looking for Latin American heavy grades,” said a trader who sold two spot crude cargoes to Citgo for June delivery. In recent weeks, Citgo also […]