On Monday, the US State Department said that Italian oil firm Eni’s plan to repair the Venezuelan floating storage and offloading (FSO) crude oil facility Nabarima would not be sanctionable.
Eni said, “Eni’s plan to safely offload the Nabarima FSO received on Thursday, October 29, a green light from the U.S. authorities, confirming that the current sanctions policy does not prevent the company from offloading the cargo and repairing the vessel.”
A spokesperson for the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs said, “Eni is under no sanctions risk to begin immediate emergency repairs.”
Eni, which owns 26% of Petrocucre, added that the plan would proceed upon approval from state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the owner of 74% of Petrosucre, which manages Nabarima.
There is, however, no clarity in whether Eni would draft a new offloading plan or if it would transfer crude to a PDVSA-operated vessel. Meanwhile, PDVSA is said to have been preparing its own plan to offload some crude aboard the Nabarima to its Icaro tanker.
At the moment, the Nabarima has been idle for almost two years following the US sanctions against PDVSA. It loads roughly 1.3 million barrels of Corocoro crude.
