When Washington announced its latest sanctions against Venezuela, targeting specifically state oil company PDVSA, there was worry—and hope, depending on perspective—that this will push crude oil prices higher. What happened in fact was a lukewarm price reaction to the news that effectively suspended Venezuelan heavy crude shipments to U.S. refiners. The reason for this lukewarm reaction, according to Reuters’ Amanda Cooper and Alex Lawler, is that there is abundant heavy crude production capacity elsewhere in the world and any gap in supplies caused by the sanctions against Venezuela will be only temporary, to be quickly filled by producers ranging from Canada to Saudi Arabia. To date, Venezuela exports about 1 million barrels of crude daily, the Reuters reporters note. However, Saudi Arabia alone has spare capacity of 1.8 million bpd that it could tap to help fill in this gap. Canada’s production could rise too, despite a provincial cap […]