Who is buying this heavy sulfur crude?
CITGO is majority-owned by PDVSA, a state-owned company of the Venezuelan government.
Venezuela imports because of deferred maintenance issues and sharks with lasers sabotaging vital components.
Who is buying this heavy sulfur crude?
Heavy, suldur crude oil is the type of oil found in V as compared to the light crude found in the US and requires a special kind of processing which is what CITGO has the refinery in V to do.
I think the tankers contain gasoline, not crude.
Venezuela's crude is already very high sulfur and they have plenty of it. What they lack is refining capacity, previously depending on US refineries. But with sanctions, and the much higher availability of low-sulfur "sweet" crude from fracking, US refineries have mostly switched away from the difficult-to-refine Venezuelan crudes.