Venezuela's total oil exports were almost unchanged in August at 1.17mln bpd

A flat print is in line with the pattern of recent years, where sanctioned flows have oscillated in a band set by the prevailing US licence regime and the availability of diluent and blending capacity, with much of the volume moving at a discount via intermediaries toward Asian refiners. The distinction worth drawing is between headline volume and realised barrels: heavy crude redirected through dark-fleet logistics and ship-to-ship transfers still reaches the market, so the sanction-sensitive variable has historically been the discount and the destination mix rather than the total. For heavy-sour balances, what moves the differential is any change in licence terms or enforcement posture out of Washington, since that determines whether these barrels compete openly with other Latin and Middle Eastern grades or stay in the discounted channel. Worth noting is that PDVSA's operational ceiling has capped upside in past episodes of policy loosening, muting the supply response even when permissions widened. As a data point rather than a policy signal, the read-through is limited.