Refiners in the United States are stocking up on heavy crude, pushing prices higher, as the Trump administration prepares to slam more punitive measures on Caracas after the inauguration of Nicolas Maduro as president of Venezuela for a second term after elections considered illegitimate by Washington. Reuters reports that officials from the presidential administration met with oil industry executives to discuss the measures on the table, including the suspension ofrefined product exports to Venezuela or Venezuelan crude oil imports into the United States. Gulf Coast refiners have a limited choice of supplier when it comes to heavy crude. Besides local grades such as Mars, they import the heavy crude they need to produce more than just gasoline from Canada, Venezuela, and Mexico. It is this scarcity of alternatives that has probably stopped Trump from banning Venezuelan oil imports so far, although the blanket import ban card has been waved […]