United States forces seized an oil tanker near the Venezuelan coastline today, President Donald Trump said, a significant escalation in the US pressure campaign against President Nicolas Maduro and his country’s oil-dependent economy.
Attorney-General Pam Bondi said the US Coast Guard, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport oil from Venezuela and Iran in defiance of sanctions.
The oil tanker had been sanctioned by the US “due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organisations”, Bondi wrote on X.
She also shared a video that shows US forces jumping out of helicopters and searching the large vessel on foot.
Earlier, Trump described the vessel as “very large” and the “largest one ever seized, actually”.
“And, other things are happening,” Trump said, speaking at a roundtable meeting of business leaders at the White House.
“So you’ll be seeing that later, and you’ll be talking about that later with some other people.”
Trump did not provide further details about the seizure, the tanker, its owner or where it was headed. “I assume we’re going to keep the oil,” he said.
The Navy and Coast Guard referred questions to the White House. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
One person familiar with the seizure said the tanker appeared to be carrying Venezuelan oil to Cuba.
The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details. The claim could not be immediately corroborated.
The legal authority for the seizure was not clear.
Washington has imposed sanctions on Venezuela and its state-owned oil company.
Several administrations, including Trump’s, have also sanctioned tankers alleged to be transporting illegal oil exports from countries under sanctions.
“Depending on what legal justification they used to seize the vessel, it could create a lot of problems for the regime,” a person familiar with the seizure said.
The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details, said the seizure could have a “big financial impact”.
The seizure adds a new tactic to the Trump Administration’s months-long military campaign in waters near Venezuela.
Since September, US forces have launched strikes against more than 20 boats it alleges were carrying drugs to the US. The strikes have killed at least 87 people.
The Pentagon has dispatched 11 warships, scores of aircraft and thousands of personnel to the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean in what it has described as an anti-drug-trafficking mission.
The build-up appears to also be a pressure campaign to unseat Maduro, who Trump has alleged directs traffickers and criminals to assault the US. Trump told Politico this week that Maduro’s “days are numbered” and declined to rule out sending US troops into Venezuela.
Venezuela boasts the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but mismanagement, decrepit equipment and US-led sanctions have sharply limited output.
The country is exporting a daily average of about 900,000 barrels, Reuters has reported, up from last year but far below the 2.4 million barrels it exported daily in 2008.
Its largest customers are China and the US, which in July reissued a licence to the US energy giant Chevron to resume operations in Venezuela.
In 2020, during the first Trump administration, the US seized 1.1 million barrels of Iranian fuel from four vessels that were headed to Venezuela.
The Justice Department said the action disrupted a multimillion-dollar shipment by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organisation, in the largest-ever seizure of fuel from Iran. The ships, however, were not seized.
Venezuelan oil provides a lifeline for Cuba, which, like Venezuela, is subject to heavy US sanctions.
The communist island nation has suffered extensive blackouts this year because of limited fuel and aging infrastructure.
Only a tiny percentage of Venezuelan oil goes to Cuba, said Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin America energy programme at Rice University in Houston.
If the Trump Administration continues seizing oil tankers in a systematic way, targeting those destined for China, that could significantly limit the willingness of black-market fleets to go to Venezuela, dealing a major economic blow to Maduro.
“That would have a tremendous impact,” Monaldi said.
But Maduro has maintained his grip on power through far worse economic circumstances, including during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, when Venezuelan oil production plummeted to less than half of what it is today, with much lower oil prices.
“Is this going to be the worst economic pressure Maduro has felt? No, it will not be. That would require a massive blockade of Venezuelan exports,” Monaldi said.
“The economic pressure that Maduro felt in that period is unlikely to ever be felt, and he survived that.”
The seizure of the oil tanker was announced hours after opposition leader Maria Corina Machado missed the Oslo ceremony to collect her Nobel Peace Prize.
Machado has been in hiding in Venezuela since January and barred by the Government from leaving the country.
Her daughter, accepting the honour in her place, said she would appear in Oslo soon. She has since arrived there.
Machado has dedicated the prize in part to Trump “for his decisive support of our cause”.
- Alex Horton contributed to this report.
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