The United States has been raising its imports of fuel oil from Russia over the past year and a half after the U.S. imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s exports, Reuters reported on Monday, quoting data from Refinitiv Eikon. Venezuela’s heavy crude oil is suitable to process in complex refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, but the sanctions have cut off Venezuelan oil flows to the United States. Last year, when the U.S. began slapping sanctions on Nicolas Maduro’s regime, refiners started to raise their imports of fuel oil from Russia, importing a record-high volume of 11 million tons for the full year 2019, double the fuel oil imports from Russia in the previous year. This year through June, American imports of fuel oil from Russia amounted to 5.3 million tons and are currently on track to match last year’s record imports, according to Refinitiv Eikon’s data. Total U.S. imports of […]