July 23 (Reuters) - Venezuela's state-owned oil company

PDVSA has received and is unloading a Russia-origin

700,000-barrel cargo of heavy naphtha, a key product for its

heavy crude output, according to vessel tracking data and a

shipping document seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

U.S.-sanctioned PDVSA needs imported light crude, condensate

and naphtha to dilute its production of heavy oil and make it

exportable. Russia and Iran, which are also under U.S.

sanctions, have provided the country with those products in the

past.

The state firm ramped up purchases of diluents ahead of a

May deadline set by Washington to wind down transactions as part

of the cancellation of U.S. licenses to its partners, but it had

not received more naphtha cargoes until this import from Russia.

The Barbados-flagged tanker Telesto departed from a

ship-to-ship location off Russia's Taman port, according to

monitoring service TankerTrackers.com, which identified the

tanker in satellite photos. The naphtha's origin seems to be

Russia's Tuapse port, it added.

The Aframax tanker began unloading last week at PDVSA's Jose

port, according to the shipping document and TankerTrackers.com.

PDVSA last month unloaded two cargoes of imported light

crude from unknown origin also to be used as diluent for a total

of 1.88 million barrels, according to the document.

Ahead of the license cancellations, PDVSA earlier this year

modified some crude blending and upgrading operations at its

main production region, the Orinoco Belt, to reduce its need for

naphtha and refine more domestically.

The OPEC country's oil exports have remained stable around

800,000 barrels per day since the license cancellations, with

PDVSA sending more cargoes to Asia after it lost the U.S. and

European markets.

(Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Emelia

Sithole-Matarise)