Reuters: Old oil terminals in Venezuela have effectively set an export ceiling for increasing this country’s crude oil output. Due to aging infrastructure, power outages, and quality issues, tankers can be forced to wait up to 30 days for cargo offloading—making Washington’s plan to rapidly increase exports more difficult.

Despite higher production, PDVSA and its partners in recent months have been unable to exceed 1.25 million barrels per day, while these terminals, when oil production peaked more than two decades ago, could handle more than 2.5 million barrels per day. These problems are mainly concentrated at the port of Jose, which accounts for about 70% of exports, and have led to disputes over storage costs, crude oil quality, and ship contamination.

Trading companies such as Vitol and Trafigura have exported more than 140 million barrels of oil this year under broad export agreements with the United States, but Washington’s $100 billion plan to rebuild the energy industry has, so far, given priority to increasing crude oil production over repairing terminals and refineries.