|
Listen now
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
US forces intercepted and seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, marking a serious escalation of tensions between the two countries.
“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela — large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually,” President Donald Trump said at the White House. “And other things are happening.”
A senior Trump administration official referred to the craft as “a stateless vessel” that was last docked in Venezuela.
Oil futures rose on the news, with Brent crude settling up 0.4% in London.
A few hours later, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted a video on X showing heavily armed forces descending to the ship’s deck from a Black Hawk helicopter, in a standard commando-style tactic called “fast roping.”
“For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations,” she wrote.
Venezuela in a statement labeled the seizure a “blatant theft” and an “act of piracy,” adding the country would defend its sovereignty and natural resources “with absolute determination”.
“The true reasons for the aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed,” the statement read. “It was always about our natural resources, our oil.”
The US action may make it much harder for Venezuela to export its oil, as other shippers are now likely to be more reluctant to load its cargoes. Most Venezuelan oil goes to China, usually through intermediaries, at steep discounts owing to sanctions risk.
“The US seizing a Venezuelan tanker is a clear escalation from financial sanctions to physical interdiction — it raises the stakes for Caracas and anyone facilitating its exports,” said Jorge Leon, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy. “This kind of action adds a geopolitical floor to prices: Even modest volumes can move sentiment when the risk is about sea lanes and state-to-state escalation.”
The Trump administration has escalated pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom it has accused of presiding over a narcotrafficking operation.
The Pentagon has conducted more than 20 strikes against purported drug-trafficking vessels in waters near Venezuela and Colombia, killing more than 80 suspects. President Donald Trump has suggested numerous times that the US could strike on land and that Maduro’s “days are numbered.”
The tanker is a massive ship known as a very large crude carrier, or VLCC, that’s among the biggest in the industry, with capacity to carry around two million barrels of oil.
The US had concluded the vessel was bound for Cuba, though it would be unusual for a boat of that size to travel from Venezuela to Cuba, based on historical shipping patterns.
US officials have long suspected Maduro’s regime of selling sanctioned crude via Cuba illegally in order to benefit from the profits while making the sales harder to trace.
The Guyana Maritime Administration Department said in a statement that it had been told by US officials that the ship was flying the Guyanese flag, though it was not registered in that country.
Follow the MoneyCentral Nigeria channel on WhatsApp: Click here!
