Diluent is arriving at Jose. It’s not getting to the field.

Diluent is arriving at Jose. It is not getting to the field at the same pace.

Trafigura discharged six heavy naphtha cargoes at Jose in April, roughly 3.2 million barrels. The shore tanks filled up. Two discharges were stopped mid-operation — the Hafnia Excel on April 14, the Advantage Portofino on April 29 — both for high shore tank inventory.

Meanwhile, at Petro Monagas in the Orinoco, the diluent tank was sitting at 30,000 barrels in mid-May against 21,400 barrels per day of consumption. Less than a day and a half of blending cover. Petro Sinovensa had around 3.5 days.

The two sides of the same supply chain show the gap. The naphtha is at the port. The blending demand is inland. The pace of inland movement is the binding variable.

That gap is consistent with the unusual flows in the April book. The Nile loaded 200,000 barrels of HVN out of Jose and ran it to Amuay. The Min Hang carried a million barrels of Merey 16 from Amuay back to Jose as an internal redistribution. Both are short-haul moves inside Venezuelan waters used to balance tank space against blending demand.

A new stream also appeared on the import side. The Phenix VI discharged 550,000 barrels of Corocoro crude at Jose on April 12 — the first time Corocoro shows up in the import book at the facility. Corocoro is offshore PDVSA production from the Costa Afuera area, and its appearance at Jose suggests use as a blending input rather than a finished export. Worth tracking as a new component.

The Varada Blessing is the other cargo to mark. The VLCC arrived at Jose carrying 1.89 million barrels of Merey 16 in transit from Spain. The cargo sat in the book through the end of April with destination still to be confirmed.

The headline export number — 1.23 million barrels per day in April — was loaded against this backdrop. The fields are producing. The buyers are buying. The naphtha is arriving. The pace of the inland leg between the import platform at Jose and the diluent tanks at the upgraders is the binding variable.

Two things will move first. Whether HVN discharge stoppages at Jose continue at the April pace, and whether Petro Monagas rebuilds its diluent buffer or runs cargo-arrival to cargo-arrival. Both will say more about the export trajectory than another month of cargo totals will.