Traders have rebranded over $1 billion worth of Venezuelan oil shipments to China as Brazilian crude, helping reduce logistics costs and bypass U.S. sanctions, according to tanker tracking companies, corporate documents, and sources reviewed by Reuters. Independent Chinese refineries, the primary buyers of seaborne oil from sanctioned countries, often use complex schemes to disguise the true origin of their oil, including changing certificates and falsifying vessel tracking data.
Since 2024, traders have been labeling Venezuelan oil as Brazilian, allowing tankers to sail directly from Venezuela to China, avoiding transshipment stops in Malaysian waters and cutting travel time by approximately four days.
According to TankerTrackers.com and documents from Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, many shipments declared as Brazilian bitumen are actually Venezuelan Merey crude — a popular heavy oil grade. This practice helps avoid the need for official crude import quotas in China.
Some tankers, including the Karina under the Liberian flag, have used a technique known as “spoofing” — falsifying location data to appear as if they loaded in Brazil when they actually departed from Venezuela.
