President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the United States has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela amid mounting tensions with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
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It's the Trump administration’s latest push to increase pressure on Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the United States. The U.S. has conducted a series of deadly military strikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean on boats that the Republican administration has alleged are carrying drugs.
“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Trump said “other things are happening,” but did not offer additional details, saying he would speak more about it later.
The seizure was carried led by the U.S Coast Guard led effort and supported by the Navy, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official added that the seizure was conducted under U.S. law enforcement authority.
The Coast Guard members were taken to the oil tanker by helicopter from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the official said. The Ford is in the Caribbean Sea after arriving last month in a major show of force, joining a fleet of other warships.
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Half of ship's oil is tied to Cuban importer
The official identified the seized tanker as the Skipper.
The ship departed Venezuela around Dec. 2 with about 2 million barrels of heavy crude, roughly half of it belonging to a Cuban state-run oil importer, according to documents from the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., commonly known as PDVSA, that were provided on the condition of anonymity because the person did not have permission to share them.
The Skipper was previously known as the M/T Adisa, according to ship tracking data. The Adisa was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022 over accusations of belonging to a sophisticated network of shadow tankers that smuggled crude oil on behalf of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group.
The network was reportedly run by a Switzerland-based Ukrainian oil trader, the U.S. Treasury Department said at the time.
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about 1 million barrels a day. Locked out of global oil markets by U.S. sanctions, the state-owned oil company sells most of its output at a steep discount to refiners in China.
The transactions usually involve a complex network of shadowy intermediaries as sanctions scared away more established traders. Many are shell companies, registered in jurisdictions known for secrecy. The buyers deploy “ghost tankers” that hide their location and hand off their valuable cargoes in the middle of the ocean before they reach their final destination.
A day earlier, the U.S. military flew a pair of fighter jets over the Gulf of Venezuela in what appeared to be the closest that warplanes had come to the South American country’s airspace since the start of the administration’s pressure campaign.
The U.S. has built up the largest military presence in the region in decades and launched a series of deadly strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.
Trump has said land attacks are coming soon but has not offered any details on location.
Among the concessions the U.S. has made to Maduro during past negotiations was approval for oil giant Chevron Corp. to resume pumping and exporting Venezuelan oil. The corporation’s activities in the South American country resulted in a financial lifeline for Maduro’s government.
