LATAM Weekly Oil Summary

Two people close to the Venezuela’s opposition candidate Maria Corina Machado were arrested this week, further complicating a narrowing chance of US energy sanctions being extended from April.

• PetroChina's Jieyang refinery is set to receive its first direct Venezuelan crude cargo this weekend according to Kpler.
• Meanwhile, PetroChina's Guangdong Petrochemical complex in the southern Guangdong province will receive its first Venezuelan Merey crude cargo around 23 March, a source told S&P Commodity Insights.
• A fire March 22 at Venezuela’s 310k b/d Cardon refinery forced the shutdown of CDU units, sources told Reuters.
• Crude loadings from Guyana are planned at 21m bbl, or 677k b/d in May, according to loading programmes seen by Bloomberg, set to be the highest on record.
• Mexico’s President Andre Manuel Lopez Obrador said his nation will continue to support state oil producer Pemex.
• AMLO also said recently that Mexico would only 6% of its gasoline demand would come from imports by September. However, this nevertheless misses the target set in 2021 that Mexico would reach self-sufficiency in 2023.
• Mexico’s state oil company Pemex expects to process 1.7m b/d of crude by the end of 2024 in its local refineries, CEO Octavio Romero said, cited by XM.
• Ecuador is planning to increase oil production to 550kbpd by the end of 2025, from 485kbpd currently, as it grants foreign producers contract extensions that had been on hold, the energy minister Andrea Arrobo said.