On New Year’s Day, an oil tanker partially filled with sanctioned crude slipped out of Venezuela’s main export terminal and sailed toward Iran. The next day, another tanker escaped with Venezuelan oil, scrambling its signals to hide its course. Satellite imagery later confirmed it was headed to China.
The two cargoes appear to be the last illicit oil to leave Venezuela, according to a report from shipping intelligence firm Kpler.
On Jan. 3, U.S. forces captured and ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Since then oil exports have dropped 75% from what the country was moving out every month last year, cutting off a vital supply of money to the Venezuelan regime.
What little oil left ports over the next 10 days was all bound for the U.S. or earmarked to be used in Venezuela’s refineries to create fuel for people and industries there.
Kpler data show cargoes en route to places like Pascagoula, Miss., where Chevron owns a large refinery, and oil-processing hubs in Corpus Christi, Texas, and St. Charles Parish in Louisiana.
Ultimately, the slowdown in Venezuelan oil flows threatens China’s status as the world’s most prolific oil buyer. The country has shopped for heavily discounted crude from places like Russia, Iran and Venezuela, but as its options become more limited, it risks slowing down its buying as the global oil market anticipates a supply glut.
“Instead of buying hand over fist, China may cool down a little bit,” said Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst at OPIS, which, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by Dow Jones. “That adds more to the global supply. They were absorbing some of that oversupply.”
The Trump administration in December began tracking—and then seizing—sanctioned oil tankers that are part of a shadow fleet that ferries crude for countries including Venezuela, Russia and Iran. On Thursday U.S. forces seized a sixth tanker, sailing under a Russian flag, with more U.S. military action promised in the coming days.
Kpler estimates nearly 48 million barrels of Venezuelan crude are outside the country’s waters and not bound for the U.S. in licensed trade, which means those cargoes could move elsewhere, including Asia, and be subject to sanctions enforcement.
American forces are taking at least some of the commandeered tankers to Texas. Two of the most recently seized ships were anchored off Galveston Island, near Houston, where big oil companies including Exxon Mobil, Phillips 66 and Valero have extensive operations.
Phillips 66 has two fuel factories on the Gulf Coast that can process Venezuelan crude, according to Mark Lashier, the company’s chief executive. He recently told investors at the Goldman Sachs energy conference that Venezuelan oil is similar in consistency and quality to Canada’s, which will help put pressure on that country’s oil prices, lowering Phillips 66’s feedstock costs at refineries around the U.S.
“Venezuela was producing three million barrels a day of heavy crude. We’ve got refineries designed for the long term to process that crude,” Lashier said, adding that it could take many years to fully resurrect the country’s energy-sector industry after decades of neglect.
“We really believe that this is an opportunity for Venezuela to return back into the capitalist fold,” he said. “It’s a crime what’s happened there, and we really do hope that it all plays out that way.”
Since the U.S. granted Chevron permission to pump more oil from Venezuela last July, China, the U.S. and Cuba have been the biggest importers of the country’s oil, Kpler data show. China absorbed the largest share by far, bringing in an average of 440,000 barrels a day. Cuba received smaller, intermittent cargoes of less than 20,000 barrels a day.
But as the U.S. military ramped up enforcement off the coast of Venezuela in early January, a group of sanctioned tankers tried to exit from the Caribbean. Some made it out to the North Atlantic Ocean, while others reversed course. The net effect: There has been a sharp halt to Asia-bound flows of Venezuelan oil, and no confirmed cargoes headed to Cuba so far this month, according to Kpler.
Without Venezuelan crude, Beijing will be looking to import more oil from Canada. The countries agreed this month to deepen their energy ties. Canada is eager to reduce its dependence on trade with the U.S. because of President Trump’s tariffs. Over 90% of Canada’s crude exports are U.S.-bound.
“What we heard loud and clear is China is looking for reliable trading partners, trading partners that don’t use energy for coercion,” Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson said following meetings in Beijing.
China has emerged as a sizable buyer of Canadian crude thanks to the Trans Mountain pipeline, which moves crude from Alberta’s oil fields to marine terminals near Vancouver, British Columbia. In the first 10 months of 2025, China accounted for more than 5% of Canadian oil exports—sharply higher than its 1.8% share during the same period of 2024, according to data from Statistics Canada.
The U.S. bid to revitalize Venezuela’s oil sector has injected further momentum on a proposed new oil pipeline in Canada that would provide another connection between Alberta and the Pacific Coast. Although Japan and other Asian nations could buy crude from such a project, analysts say China would most certainly be the primary customer.
Write to Collin Eaton at collin.eaton@wsj.com and Paul Vieira at Paul.Vieira@wsj.com