2026-01-04 11:49
publication
2026-01-04 11:49
The large VLCC ship Thousand Sunny, which had been sailing to Venezuela under the Chinese flag for crude oil since December, changed course after the US attack on that country and is now heading to Nigeria, according to Marinetraffic data showing the current location of the ships.
Another supertanker, the Xing Ye, which was cruising off the coast of French Guiana in the first days of January, apparently waiting for developments, is now slowly moving away from the South American continent, heading east towards the Gulf of Guinea.
Just before the military operation carried out on Saturday in Venezuela, the United States imposed sanctions on four more tankers supplying Venezuelan crude oil to China: Della, Nord Star, Rosalind and Valiant. Of the four, only the Guinea-registered Rosalind is still in Caribbean waters, between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago. The remaining ships, according to the Wall Street Journal, have given up on reaching Venezuela, and two of them are heading towards the western shores of Africa.
For years, China was the largest buyer of Venezuelan oil, purchasing over 90 percent. raw material exported by this country. Despite sanctions imposed by the US on Venezuelan oil in 2019, Beijing also invested in Venezuelan oil fields. In August 2025, Reuters reported that the private company China Concord Resources Corp. intends to invest over USD 1 billion in two oil fields on Lake Maracaibo in this South American country by the end of 2026.
Nigeria, which has the largest oil reserves in Africa, estimated at almost 40 billion barrels, may benefit from the US overthrow of the self-proclaimed Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro. Year by year, the country increases sales of this raw material to China, which is also its main recipient. In 2024, these exports reached over USD 768 million, and in October 2025 alone – almost USD 70 million – according to data from the UN COMTRADE platform.
Tadeusz Brzozowski (PAP)
tebe/ akl/
