Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials say there is no in­for­ma­tion to sup­port re­ports that this coun­try’s ports are be­ing used by Venezuela’s state oil com­pa­ny, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), to avoid Unit­ed States sanc­tions.

This fol­lows a re­port on the web­site Lloyd’s Mar­itime In­tel­li­gence that ships ap­pear to be col­lect­ing oil car­go in Venezuela be­fore stop­ping in this coun­try and set­ting off again. The site said this raised sus­pi­cion that car­goes are be­ing hid­den and PDVSA is us­ing co-loads and false berthings to dis­guise car­go ori­gins in an ef­fort to avoid US sanc­tions.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion of the Works and Trans­port Min­istry, on­ly one ves­sel, Min­doro, called at Ch­aguara­mas on March 23. This ap­pears to con­tra­dict the on­line re­port which sug­gests that three tankers be­long­ing to PDVSA loaded oil car­goes in Venezuela then di­vert­ed to ar­eas close to T&T for sev­er­al hours.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan said he asked the Di­rec­tor of Mar­itime Ser­vices to check in­to the mat­ter. He was told that based on their com­put­erised ar­rival sys­tem, there is no record of the two oth­er ves­sels men­tioned in the re­port ever berthing in Trinidad. The re­port from the Di­vi­sion says based on their records, the lone ves­sel which ar­rived last month vis­it­ed for sup­plies and de­part­ed on the same day.

A well-placed gov­ern­ment source al­so ques­tioned the re­port­ing say­ing it pro­vid­ed no ev­i­dence to show that bills of lad­ing were be­ing changed.