The US Coast Guard Cutter Escanaba in June. The branch of the US armed forces is overseen by the Department of Homeland Security. Photo / Getty Images
United States forces boarded a commercial vessel off Venezuela today, days after President Donald Trump announced a “total and complete blockade” on all oil tankers under US sanctions entering or leaving Venezuela.
It’s part of the Administration’s mounting pressure campaign against the Government of President Nicolas Maduro.
US Coast Guard members boarded the oil tanker Centuries, which the US Department of Homeland Security said was “suspected of carrying oil subject to US sanctions”.
It was the second ship boarded by US forces off Venezuela this month.
The ship was last docked in Venezuela, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.
A video she posted on social media shows military helicopters approaching the vessel and then hovering in place as service members rappel down to a deck.
The Administration is increasing pressure on Venezuela’s drug trade and economy in a broader effort to force Maduro from office.
The US has deployed more than a dozen warships to the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean since August and launched more than two dozen military strikes on boats that it claims were crewed by “narco-terrorists” smuggling drugs into the US.
The 27 strikes announced by the Administration have killed at least 104 people connected to drug cartels, officials have said. They have not provided evidence to support their claims.
Noem tied the efforts to interdict oil tankers and the boat strikes together, claiming that the boarded vessel showed the “illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region”.
The US has not, in fact, imposed sanctions on Venezuelan oil.
DHS described today action as a “lightning strike operation to seize” the Centuries, but the legal grounds for such a seizure and whether the vessel or any of its cargo was, in fact, seized were unclear.
The Venezuelan Government said it “categorically rejects the theft and hijacking of a new private vessel carrying Venezuelan oil, as well as the forced disappearance of its crew, committed by military personnel of the United States of America in international waters”.
In a statement, the Government called the action a “grave act of piracy” that violated the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Convention on the High Seas and other international law.
The Centuries, a 24-year-old, Panamanian-flagged oil tanker, is the sole vessel owned by Centuries Shipping in Hong Kong, according to the International Maritime Organisation, a UN agency.
Neither the vessel nor the company is under any sanctions, according to the IMO.
Jeremy Paner, a former lead investigator and analyst for the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), said the action “runs counter to Trump’s statement” that his blockade applies only to ships under US sanctions.
Paner said Noem’s statement was “definitely a misuse of the term ‘illicit.’ Absent a connection to the US, there is absolutely nothing illegal as it pertains to sanctions in relation to the cargo”.
The Centuries was loaded with 1.8 million barrels of Venezuelan crude at the Puerto Jose Terminal off the Venezuelan coast between December 7 and 11, according to TankerTrackers.com.
The independent website sighted the vessel in satellite imagery east of Venezuela on Friday NZT.
The Coast Guard earlier this month boarded and seized the tanker Skipper, which was travelling under a false Guyanese flag and intermittently masking its position from trackers.
The US had imposed sanctions on the vessel several years earlier for carrying Iranian oil.
Sanctions on PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company, apply only to its dealings with certain US people or entities.
Because the Centuries is not under US sanctions, a US official told the Washington Post, the Coast Guard relied on a maritime law called “right of visit”, which allows a warship to board and inspect a vessel it suspects is engaging in illicit activity.
The US got permission from the Government of Panama to board the vessel, the official said.
The Centuries was carrying oil from a China-based trader with a history of transporting Venezuelan crude oil to Chinese refineries, according to a person familiar with Venezuela’s oil industry.
The operation was conducted with support from US Navy helicopters, two US officials said.
The blockade could affect more than 30 tankers in the Caribbean currently under US sanctions, according to analysis from TankerTrackers.com and the global intelligence company Kpler.
At least 12 of these vessels are carrying Venezuelan oil, according to Kpler.
The second Trump Administration has added 230 vessels to OFAC’s designation list, meaning the ships are “blocked” property. Sixty-nine of the vessels were flagged by Panama when the designations were announced.
As Trump announced his blockade, he said he was also declaring the entire “Maduro regime” a foreign terrorist organisation, a designation that could be used to seize any Venezuelan state-owned property, including oil.
It was not clear whether the State Department, responsible for issuing such designations, has officially done so.
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