On April 3, 2002, Venezuela shipped its first commercial export of synthetic crude oil (syncrude) to a U.S. Gulf Coast refinery. The shipment came from the newly inaugurated Sincor upgrading plant, which converted extra-heavy crude from the Orinoco Belt into lighter, refinery-ready oil.
The Sincor facility had the capacity to produce up to 180,000 barrels per day, making it one of the largest heavy-oil upgrading projects in the world at the time. Venezuela's Orinoco Belt holds an estimated 1.2 trillion barrels of recoverable heavy oil, rivaling Saudi Arabia's conventional reserves.
This export marked a key step in integrating heavy crude into global markets and expanding North America's access to non-traditional oil supplies.
