Venezuela's oil trade reopened. The risk moved to the vessel.

Venezuela is not a binary, open-or-closed sanctions story. Trade responds to restrictions, but it also responds to waivers, licences and commercial incentives. For anyone shipping, financing or screening Venezuelan cargoes, the question is no longer only, “Is this vessel on a list?” It is, “What is this vessel doing, and what does the evidence say?”

That shift is visible in the flows data. It is also visible at sea, where vessels can disappear from the Automatic Identification System (AIS), cargo can change hulls in ship-to-ship (STS) transfers, and activity can take place in ports and on routes that traditional sources do not show.

Sanctions changed who could trade, not how much oil flowed

Kpler flows data shows that Venezuelan crude exports averaged about 870 kbd in 2025, even as policy tightened. Sanctions policy changes who can trade and through which channels. It does not immediately switch off physical production.

The break came in January 2026, when exports fell to about 667 kbd. That is a visible disruption, though not one that can be attributed to a single factor. Exports then rebounded. From April to September, they averaged about 1.14 mbd.

The policy framework changed the commercial architecture around Venezuelan barrels. It changed which entities could lift, source, finance and transport the cargo. The flows data shows how quickly the market adapted.

A timeline in which the same voyage can carry different risk

Timing and licence scope matter, because the same vessel movement can carry different risk implications depending on both.

• 26 February 2025: The US administration announced the wind-down of energy-related authorisations.
• Following the announcement: The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued general licences 41A and 41B, which moved joint venture activity into a wind-down through late May.
• 24 March 2025: Executive Order 14245 created a discretionary 25% tariff mechanism for countries importing Venezuelan oil. At that point, it targeted China most closely.
• July 2025: A restricted licence restored limited operations. Maximum pressure did not mean all authorised trade disappeared. Some permissions became more specific and more conditional.
• 3 January 2026: The US operation Absolute Resolve removed Nicolás Maduro. OFAC then moved quickly to a controlled reopening and issued general licences 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 50A and 52. Licence 48 covered goods and services for the oil and gas sector, and licence 49 allowed certain investment negotiations. Licence 52 broadened the authorised transactions involving sanctioned entities within Venezuela.
• August to September 2026: OFAC continued to amend these licences and ease some contract conditions.

The framework moved from broad pressure to selective waivers, then to intervention, and then to a tightly conditioned reopening. Licence scope, vessel status and counterparty analysis now matter more.

Where the barrels go, and who carries them

The destination mix shows how routes change when the legal framework changes. In 2022, China and unknown destinations dominated. In 2026, the US is the largest identified destination, followed by India and Spain. That fits a licensing framework that brings more cargo into traceable commercial corridors.

The risk has not disappeared. Unknown destinations, hubs such as the Bahamas and Curaçao, and STS flows still need review at vessel and cargo level.

The vessel network is also changing. Kpler data shows more than 560 Venezuelan crude trades in 2026, involving 189 vessels. Screening therefore cannot stop at the cargo owner or the destination. A vessel can be absent from sanctions lists and still have high-risk behaviour or cargo history.

Tanker capacity is also mobile. Vessels periodically associated with Latin American crude can be reallocated to other sanctioned or high-risk corridors, such as Iran. Risk should be assessed across networks, not single voyages.

The AIS track is a signal, not ground truth

AIS is extremely useful, but the quality of the underlying signal matters. Coverage gaps are more likely in places such as Venezuela. Messages can be delayed or duplicated. Positioning signals can be spoofed, and vessel identity and flag can change. Anything shown on a map should be validated before use.

Three behaviours recur in sanctions-sensitive trades:

• AIS gaps, or dark periods. A vessel goes silent around a loading area, an anchorage or another location.
• AIS spoofing. A vessel transmits a route or position that does not match reality. Analysts test it against coverage, movement physics and satellite imagery.
• STS transfers. Cargo moves quickly between hulls. The reason is sometimes operational, but in a sanctions context a transfer can also obscure origin or change the paper trail.

These are indicators, not verdicts. An AIS gap can result from a deliberate switch-off, but also from coverage limits or technical issues. In the Strait of Hormuz, some vessels are switching off AIS to protect themselves against attacks. STS transfers are a normal part of maritime trade in many locations.

What changes the assessment is the combination of signals. Analysts consider where the vessel was previously, what cargo it carried, whether satellite imagery shows an undeclared draught change, who owns it, whether it has sanctions exposure, and how nearby vessels behaved at the same time.

A screening sequence that starts with the cargo

A risk reconstruction follows a fixed order:

1. Identify the cargo and its origin. Is it Venezuelan crude, and where did it load?
2. Review vessel behaviour for AIS gaps, spoofing indicators and anomalous course patterns.
3. Check for STS transfers or dark events at sensitive anchorages.
4. Validate with satellite imagery and analyst review.
5. Only then assign an exposure risk indicator.

A risk indicator is not a legal conclusion. It is a signal for enhanced due diligence. For Venezuelan-linked cargoes, four questions frame the screening:

• Licence: Is the movement within the correct licence scope, dates, counterparties and destination?
• Cargo: Is it direct Venezuelan crude, a blend or a re-export?
• Vessel behaviour: Are there AIS gaps, spoofing indicators or dark events?
• Network: What do ownership, management, flag, prior cargo history and counterparties show?

List screening is where the process starts, not where it finishes. A vessel may not be designated and still carry significant risk. Sanctions are a political decision, so future designations cannot be predicted. The complete risk picture for a vessel and its counterparties can, however, be assessed against a company’s own risk appetite.

What to watch next

Four things matter for the months ahead:

• Licences: New authorisations, wind-downs, reporting requirements and exclusions.
• Destinations: Shifts in the balance between the US, India and Europe.
• Fleet migration: Vessels moving between Venezuelan, Russian, Iranian and other high-risk corridors, depending on margin.
• Behavioural spikes: Clusters of dark activity, spoofing and STS transfers around loading zones.

Seeing more, earlier, with fewer false alarms

The quality of any risk result depends on the quality of the data beneath it. Kpler owns and operates more than 13,500 terrestrial and satellite receivers worldwide, adds over 1,000 receivers a year, and operates 66 proprietary satellites. Its patented spectrum de-collision processing captures 10 times more signals than satellites without it. Intra-satellite communication brings latency down to seconds or less. The network processes over 1 billion AIS messages a day, at an average message frequency of about 20 seconds and latency of about 1 second.

Because Kpler owns the infrastructure, it has direct access to raw data and can detect anomalies before the data reaches customers. In practice, that means seeing more, seeing it earlier and missing less. Denser data produces a more complete movement history, so gaps, inconsistencies and anomalies stand out more clearly.

It also changes the analyst’s job. No team can search billions of positions for something unusual. Anomaly detection flags the exception, such as a movement pattern consistent with dark activity, an unusual port event, spoofing or a possible STS transfer. Analysts then confirm it and link it to a satellite image. Research teams face fewer false positives and spend less time on deep investigation.

The same network, applied to supply chain risk

Compliance is not the only risk that depends on seeing what vessels actually do. A shipping schedule shows what should happen, while AIS shows what has happened. Combining container tracking, vessel schedules and AIS gives actual arrivals and departures, port congestion and a predicted arrival time. The predicted time can differ from the scheduled arrival by three to seven days.

In Latin America, ports are critical nodes. If congestion builds at Santos, Cartagena or Manzanillo, the impact can pass along the rest of the journey. Combining vessel arrivals, congestion, berth and port events and container flows shows where disruption is building, which cargo is exposed and when it is now likely to arrive.

Average waiting time hides the worst cases. Switching a port view from average to maximum waiting time answers a different question: What is the worst delay to plan around? For four major Brazilian ports, the peaks can be significantly higher than normal operating levels and can move between ports over time. Aggregated data updates every 30 minutes, so changes in turnaround times can be monitored as they happen.

The principle is the same for sanctions screening and container tracking. The better physical activity at sea is observed, the better the decisions that follow.