The U.S. Coast Guard enforced a blockade of Venezuelan oil on Sunday by attempting to board a sanctioned tanker in the Caribbean.
The coast guard was chasing the tanker fiddle 1A sanctioned and unregulated ship that is en route to Venezuela to load a cargo of oil, according to a US official. Operation done after boarding centuriesA Panamanian ship, captured and seized in a pre-dawn raid on Saturday captain Near Venezuela on 10 December.
“The United States Coast Guard is in active pursuit of a sanctioned Dark Fleet vessel that is part of the Venezuelan illegal sanctions evasion,” the official said. “It is flying a false flag and is under judicial seizure order.”
Real-time data and analytics firm Kepler said fiddle 1 It was one of four tankers headed to Venezuela that ran aground on December 15. captain Was confiscated. But later it turned around again and resumed its journey towards Venezuela.
An American official gave this information new York Times The ship did not agree to board and continued sailing.
fiddle 1 It was cleared by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for involvement in Iranian oil transportation in June 2024 and is currently listed as a missing flag by the International Maritime Organization, Keppler said.
The seizure of the tanker comes after Donald Trump this week ordered a “complete and total” blockade of sanctioned oil tankers traveling to and from Venezuela. It comes as the president is considering military action on Venezuelan soil, expanding his campaign to crack down on drug traffickers based in the country and increasing pressure on autocratic President Nicolas Maduro to step down.
Schreiner Parker, head of emerging markets at energy consultancy Rystad Energy, said the arrest of the two ships in quick succession demonstrated the Trump administration’s determination to shut down oil exports. He said modern radar and satellite capabilities mean oil tankers can no longer avoid detection by disabling transponders or using false flags and are vulnerable to interception.
Parker said, “In practical terms, a severe Trump blockade could be equivalent to almost completely shutting down Venezuelan crude oil exports, other than the 150,000 barrels per day produced by Chevron under the OFAC exclusive license.”
About 80 percent of exports go to China through intermediaries.
The contradictions have drawn questions from lawmakers, including the US president’s own party.
“I consider this a provocation and a prelude to war,” Republican Senator Rand Paul said on ABC. “And I hope we don’t go to war with Venezuela.”
To enforce the blockade, the US has carried out its largest military mobilization in the Caribbean Sea since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
An effective ban on oil exports, which exceeded 900,000 barrels per day in November, would have a devastating impact on Venezuela’s economy.
Maduro, a Cuban-trained revolutionary socialist in power since 2013, relies on black market oil sales for badly needed foreign currency and to fuel the patronage network that partly keeps him in power, according to analysts.
The US and its allies consider Maduro to have won re-election last year. Washington has named him as the head of the Cartel of the Sons, a drug trafficking organization allegedly run by Venezuela’s military and political elite.
Maduro has cited the deployment of US marines as a pretext for his ouster.
A Venezuelan government spokesman did not confirm the interception of the third ship on Sunday morning, although described it as centuries As “Chinese ship with 40 Chinese crew members”.
The Venezuelan government condemned “the theft and hijacking of a private Venezuelan oil tanker” in a statement Saturday night. centuries,
“The colonial model that the US government seeks to impose through such practices will fail and be defeated by the Venezuelan people.”
American interception centuries It highlighted that ships that are not on the US sanctions list could also be seized if they carry cargoes of sanctioned oil.
It was revealed from satellite images centuries Kepler said crude had been loaded at Venezuela’s Jose oil terminal in recent days and was causing the automatic identification positioning system to malfunction. It said the tanker had loaded approved cargo earlier also.
The US has indicated it intends to seize the sanctioned oil intercepted by its fleet, including the 1.85 million barrels on board. captain – A tanker that was previously placed under sanctions for allegedly being part of an oil-smuggling network that funded Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
TankerTrackers.com, a marine tracking service, said on Sunday. captain It is now located near the US Gulf Coast where its oil will likely be transferred to refineries in the Houston area.
Oil prices rose when markets resumed trading on Sunday, with international benchmark Brent crude rising about 0.6 percent.
$60.87.
