Reply #59: About 70% of Venezuela's production is heavy crude [View All]

[ctex]

In the past Venezuela has preferentially refined its higher quality (i.e., lighter, sweeter) crude and used the products at home while exporting the heavier crudes. The preferred market for the latter has been the US which currently has more of the type of refining capacity needed to process heavy crude than any other country. However, Venezuela itself has built a lot of heavy crude refining capacity over the past decade. Perhaps Chavez plans on switching to the poorer quality of crude for domestic refining and sell the higher quality material to countries other than the US.

Western Europe is particularly short of the type of capacity needed to refine heavy crude oil. I don't know off-hand what either India or China have that could handle heavy crude effectively.