Venezuela to Receive Angolan Crude from Statoil

Venezuela's state-run oil firm PDVSA will receive next week a 935,000-barrel cargo of Angola's Girassol medium crude at its Bullenbay terminal in the Caribbean island of Curacao, after awarding a tender to Norway's oil com Statoil, according to traders and Reuters data.

PDVSA in September changed the terms of crude tenders it had been launching since last year to import Urals crude and it is now requesting any 30-33 API degree crude with up to 1.1 percent of sulfur, while Russia's Rosneft is providing the company with Urals under a supply contract.

The Angolan crude, on tanker Maran Pythia, was loaded on Oct. 20 at Girassol terminal and it plans to be unloaded on Nov. 6, Reuters trade flows and vessel tracking data say.

PDVSA this week closed a second tender to buy a 30-33 API degree crude cargo for November delivery at Bullenbay.

The company did not answer a request for comment.

Royal Dutch Shell (RYDAF) has been selling African crudes to PDVSA since June. At least six cargoes, of 800,000-1 million barrels each of Nigerian and Angolan grades, have been delivered by the firm at PDVSA's terminal in Curacao.

Venezuela is buying some 2 million barrels per month of different crudes, mostly Russian and African light and medium grades, to be processed at its Isla refinery in Curacao, while freeing volumes of its own light crude production to use it as diluent.

Reporting by Marianna Parraga; with additional reporting by Alexandra Ulmer in Caracas)