Traders Haul 12 Million Barrels of Trump’s Venezuelan Oil (1)

Trafigura Group and Vitol Group are poised to load roughly 12 million barrels of Venezuelan crude onto tankers less than three weeks after the US seized control of the nation’s oil riches.

The commodity giants have hired a fleet of vessels and reserved storage capacity across the Caribbean to fulfill US government contracts to market as much as 50 million barrels of Venezuela’s crude. Thus far, they’ve loaded or made arrangements to do so for about one-fourth of that volume, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Oil production in Venezuela’s most important field plunged by more than 20% after ...