Venezuelan oil exports to China are on the rise at the same time sales to the United States are on the decline, the U.S. Department of Energy reported. Venezuela's state-run energy company PDVSA announced South America's largest oil exporter shipped an average of 197,000 barrels per day of crude oil and byproducts to China so far in 2007, El Universal newspaper reported Tuesday.
While that amount pales in comparison to the nearly 1.4 million bpd of Venezuelan oil that was exported to the United States in July, China's exports have risen nearly three-fold since last year.
Erik Kreil, an international oil market analyst at the U.S. Energy Information Administration, noted that Venezuela's exports to China were 27,500 bpd day in the first half of 2005, the first full year Beijing began pursuing Venezuelan petroleum. By the first half of 2006, Venezuelan oil exports reached 70,000 bpd.
Kreil and others attribute the increase to China's own growing demand for fuel, as well as Venezuela's desire to diversify its customer portfolio and reduce its dependency on the United States. "But China can only take so much," Kreil told United Press International Tuesday. "The bottom line is there is only so much they can diversify away" from the United States.
EDIT
http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Analysis_Venezuela_ups_exports_to_China_999.html