U.S. sanctions had a huge impact on crude-tanker supply and spot rates in 2019, when the tankers of China’s COSCO (Dalian) were sidelined after carrying Iranian crude. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced Tuesday that it had sanctioned four tankers and their operating companies because they loaded crude oil for export in Venezuela.

Sanctioned ships include two very large crude carriers (VLCCs; tankers that carry 2 million barrels of crude oil), one Suezmax (a tanker carrying 1 million barrels) and one Aframax (750,000 barrels) that loaded in Venezuela over the past three months. All four are commercially managed out of Greece. Data shows that the crude was shipped to China through transport operations involving one or more ship-to-ship (STS) transfers. Almost all of the STS operations loaded the Venezuelan crude onto other tankers managed by Greeks — including some very big names in the industry…