According to the agency, China National Petroleum Corp and PetroChina state companies have stopped loading oil cargoes in the Venezuelan ports since August 2019 after the US expanded sanctions on Venezuela to include any foreign firms dealing with PDVSA.
According to the TankerTrackers monitoring service, the first tanker to resume the direct crude shipment to China was the Kyoto vessel which loaded 1.8 million barrels of oil at the Venezuelan Jose port at the end of August.
For the last five years, the US has introduced a series of sanctions against Venezuela, in particular its state oil company PDSVA. The sanctions include a freeze on Venezuelan accounts in Europe and the blocking of PDSVA's assets in the US jurisdiction as well as the prohibition on transactions with them.
