Merey: of the $8 discount to Maya, only $2 is permanent

Merey 16 sells today at about $8 per barrel below Mexican Maya. Only $2 of that is permanent. The other $6 come from sanctions and quality, and should close toward 2029.

The difference matters in any model. Many estimate the Venezuelan price as a fixed multiple of WTI, between 0.70 and 0.92. That shortcut blends what lasts and what passes into a single number.

Where it comes from

The finding comes from C4Accel’s own study on the Venezuelan oil basket. It measures realized prices, with a cut-off of September 30, 2026.

The study assigns each basin its natural marker. Maya serves the Orinoco Belt and Lake Maracaibo. LLS serves the East, WTI Midland serves Barinas and WCS serves Boscán.

It then breaks the discount to that marker into four parts that add up. All are measured in dollars per barrel.

• Structural, permanent: quality and logistics, calibrated with 2012 to 2018 data.
• Sanctions, temporary: calibrated with real transaction prices.
• Degraded quality, specific to today’s Merey: it recovers toward 2029.
• 2026 conditions: the Hormuz crisis and the freight shock, with a zero base.

For Merey, in the fourth quarter of 2026, the sum is $8. That is 2 structural, 3 from sanctions, 3 from quality and 0 from conditions.

Transaction prices back the compression. Between March and June, Merey reached the United States practically at par with Maya. The differences were +$0.53, −$3.97 and +$3.33 per barrel. The source and the basis are the same for both crudes.

In September, PDVSA sells to its joint-venture partners at Brent −12/−13. In January it sold at Brent −13/−20.

The study marks its own limit. The direction of the compression is confirmed; its size, not yet. The Hormuz crisis made heavy sour crude more expensive and favored Merey on the Gulf Coast. At the same time, freight from José rose from $1.90 to $5 per barrel.

Which decision it changes

For a C-suite executive, the finding touches three pieces of the pricing model.

The long-term price. A fixed discount penalizes the future with the sanctioned past. In the base scenario, Merey’s discount falls to $5 in 2027-2028. From 2029 it stays at 2, only the structural part. Treat those values as a projection: they depend on sanctions and quality continuing to close.

The marker. Merey’s base realized price is $73 in the fourth quarter of 2026. It falls to 59 in 2027-2028 and rises to 61 from 2029. It is a scenario from the study, with a range of $64 to $81 for today.

Almost all of that movement comes from the marker, not from the discount. The EIA projects Maya at about $81 at the end of 2026 and $64 in 2027. Your model should test Brent and Maya sensitivity first.

Who sells, and through which channel. A non-state partner earns something different from PDVSA’s official price. In September 2026, partners resold their share to traders at Brent −16. With the Brent expected for year-end, that gives about $75 per barrel.

The gap with the official price is freight plus the margin of a concentrated channel. Two trading houses move more than half of exports. For a non-US operator it weighs somewhat more. General licenses cover US persons. That is why it places its crude through covered counterparties.

If you are evaluating a field, a crude purchase or an entry as a partner, these pieces move your number.

What else is behind it

The full study adds up to a detailed report, an annex and a matrix. This article touches only Merey. Behind it are, among others:

• Each basin’s discount to its marker, over three horizons.
• The Lake Maracaibo, East and Barinas crudes, which have no public price.
• Why the OPEC price series does not show the compression.
• The effect of licenses 52B and 52C on the commercial regime.
• The revision of the 2022 discount, which turned out smaller than believed.

The price worth using changes with the basin where you buy or sell.