Venezuela just took a back seat to Columbia in the US oil market for the first time on record
- Columbia exported 477,000 barrels per day to the US in February.
- Venezuela exported 472,000 barrels per day to the US, falling more than 10%.
- Venezuela has typically outpaced Columbia in volume of US crude exports.
As operations at Venezuela's state-run oil company PDVSA fall apart, the country is losing key market share.
Venezuela fell behind Columbia in volume of oil exports to the US - one of its biggest markets - in February, according to the US Energy Information Administration. This is the first time on record that Venezuela has trailed Columbia in oil exports to the US, data going back to 1993 showed.
Columbia exported 477,000 barrels per day to the US in the second month of 2018, the EIA said. The number of Venezuelan shipments to the US dropped 10.6% that month to an average of 472,000 barrels per day.
Venezuela has been siphoning funds from its oil industry as the country struggles to pay debts. On top of that, it's struggling to keep workers on the job - thousands of PDVSA employees began fleeing the company after it fell under military control.
The most recent dropoff puts Columbia in fifth place among top oil suppliers to the US, a spot Venezuela previously held. Venezuela has historically outpaced Columbia in crude output to the US. In October 2017, the US imported more than double the number of barrels from Venezuela than from Columbia.
Output fell to a new long-term low of 1.5 million barrels per day in April, according to a Reuters survey. Analysts at Bank of America Merill Lynch expect the country's crude oil output to continue to slide, ending the year at 1.1 million barrels per day.
