The Volans loaded from La Salina on February 23, around 400,000 barrels of Blend 22, with Trafigura on the buyer line. The cargo sailed inside the March book.
PDVSA reopened La Salina in April 2025 to give the new Blend 22 grade an outlet. The terminal sits on the northeastern shore of Lake Maracaibo, and it carries the constraints that come with that geography. Cargoes are capped near 350,000 barrels because of lake draft. The submarine pipelines that feed the loading island are old, and tankers have historically had to plan for hull cleaning after loading. Volumes through the terminal have been modest in recent cycles.
The Volans cargo confirms La Salina is still in rotation a year later. The harder question is who actually wants a 350,000-barrel Blend 22 cargo out of Lake Maracaibo, and at what price.
The economics narrow fast. A small parcel of heavy sour out of a constrained terminal has to clear two cost layers most Venezuelan cargoes don't carry. The lake transit alone runs the vessel through restricted draft and pilotage. If the buyer wants to upsize to anything closer to a typical Aframax or Suezmax economic load, they need an STS in Venezuelan waters, which adds time, marine risk, and a sanctions-environment that traders price into the spread. By the time the cargo is moving on full freight, the Blend 22 discount has to absorb all of it.
That leaves a short list of refining homes. USGC is the only destination where the freight math works cleanly on a 350,000-barrel parcel. But the US Gulf Coast is already taking the Boscan and Hamaca volume Chevron lifts every week out of Bajo Grande and Jose, plus Merey 16 cargoes landing at LOOP, GOLA, Corpus Christi and Port Arthur. The heavy sour slate is well-covered. Europe doesn't pencil at this parcel size — the Atlantic crossing on a small lot kills the margin, and Repsol and the other European buyers are already long Merey from the regular Jose program. Asia is a non-starter without an STS upsize, which puts you right back into the cost and risk layer that made the original parcel difficult to place.
This is the netback picture behind La Salina's current cadence. The terminal works. The grade is real. PDVSA can produce and load it. The commercial outlet is thin because every barrel out of La Salina has to find a refiner who isn't already covered from a closer or larger loading point.
As long as USGC stays well-supplied through the Chevron program and the parcel-size cap stays where it is, Blend 22 is likely to move in small, infrequent cargoes priced to attract opportunistic buyers.
The Volans is one of those parcels. Whether more follow in April and May is the read on whether the discount has widened enough to bring a second tier of buyers in.