A flotil­la of five tankers car­ry­ing Iran­ian fu­el for gaso­line-starved Venezuela is ap­proach­ing the Caribbean, with the first ves­sel ex­pect­ed to reach the South Amer­i­can coun­try's wa­ters on Sun­day, ac­cord­ing to Re­fini­tiv Eikon track­ing da­ta.

Iran is sup­ply­ing about 1.53 mil­lion bar­rels of gaso­line and alky­late to Venezuela, ac­cord­ing to both gov­ern­ments, sources and cal­cu­la­tions made by Tanker­Track­ers.com based on the ves­sels' draft lev­els.

The ship­ments have caused a diplo­mat­ic stand­off be­tween Iran and Venezuela and the Unit­ed States as both na­tions are un­der US sanc­tions. Wash­ing­ton is con­sid­er­ing mea­sures in re­sponse, ac­cord­ing to a se­nior US of­fi­cial, who did not elab­o­rate on any op­tions be­ing weighed.

The US re­cent­ly beefed up its naval pres­ence in the Caribbean for what it said was an ex­pand­ed an­ti-drug op­er­a­tion. But a Pen­ta­gon spokesman, Jonathan Hoff­man, said on Thurs­day he was not aware of any op­er­a­tions re­lat­ed to the Iran­ian car­goes.

"We have con­tin­ued to say that Iran and Venezuela - both two out­liers in the in­ter­na­tion­al or­der - [are] clear­ly vi­o­lat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sanc­tions on both na­tions with this trans­ac­tion," he told re­porters.

Venezuela's de­fense min­is­ter said its mil­i­tary will es­cort the Iran­ian tankers once they reach the na­tion's ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zone.

Iran-flagged tanker For­tune, the first in the flotil­la, was ap­proach­ing the Caribbean Sea on Fri­day. It has been nav­i­gat­ing with its satel­lite sig­nal on since it passed the Suez Canal ear­li­er in May. The four oth­er ves­sels are fol­low­ing the same route across the At­lantic Ocean, the Eikon da­ta showed.

The OPEC-mem­ber coun­try des­per­ate­ly needs fu­el for up to 1,800 gaso­line sta­tions that have been par­tial­ly closed for weeks due to in­suf­fi­cient sup­ply from state-run PDVSA's re­finer­ies, which un­til March worked at about 10 per­cent of their joint ca­pac­i­ty of 1.3 mil­lion bar­rels per day (bpd).

PDVSA's gaso­line out­put is now lim­it­ed to a sin­gle fa­cil­i­ty, the Amuay re­fin­ery, but most fu­el pro­duced is low oc­tane as most of the coun­try's alky­la­tion units are out of ser­vice, ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny sources. Im­port­ed alky­late could im­prove the qual­i­ty of do­mes­tic gaso­line.

PDVSA did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­ply to a re­quest for com­ment.

Venezuela was con­sum­ing 170,000 bpd of gaso­line be­fore coro­n­avirus-re­lat­ed lock­down mea­sures. Fu­el sales at sta­tions de­clined to about 40,000 bpd due to ra­tioning, ac­cord­ing to an­a­lysts.

Over a decade of mis­man­age­ment and lack of staff - com­bined with US sanc­tions that since 2019 have lim­it­ed im­ports - have left Venezuela's re­finer­ies in poor con­di­tion. Ship­ments of equip­ment in flights by Iran's Ma­han Air have ar­rived in Venezuela in re­cent weeks to start re­pair work.

The US De­part­ment of the Trea­sury this week black­list­ed the Chi­nese firm that pro­vid­ed the re­fin­ery parts. Bei­jing called the sanc­tions "il­le­gal".