By Christina Thykjaer &Jeremiah Fisayo-BambiwithAP
Release date
US President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the United States had seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, amid heightened tensions with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“We seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a very large oil tanker, in fact, the largest oil tanker ever seized,” President Trump told reporters at the White House. “It was seized for a very good reason.”
Trump added that “there are other things going on,” but gave no further details and said he would talk about them later.
The Venezuelan government condemned the seizure as “blatant theft and an act of international piracy.”
“Under these circumstances, the true reason for the long-standing aggression against Venezuela has finally become clear. The issue has always been about our natural resources, oil and energy, and resources that belong only to the Venezuelan people,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Recent developments have increased pressure on Maduro, who Washington has indicted on narco-terrorism charges.
The seizure was carried out in an operation led by the U.S. Coast Guard and supported by the Navy, an anonymous U.S. official said.
What do we know about oil tankers?
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi shared a video on social media showing U.S. troops high-speed roping from one of the operational helicopters and hovering just a few feet from the deck. Later in the video, Coast Guard members can be seen walking around the ship’s superstructure brandishing weapons.
The seized tanker, identified in U.S. media as “Skipper,” reportedly left Venezuela around December 2 with a cargo of about 2 million barrels of heavy crude oil, about half of which belonged to Cuba’s state oil importer, according to documents from state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA, also known as PDVSA.
The oil tanker, formerly known as “M/T Adisa,” was sanctioned by the United States in 2022 for being part of a sophisticated shadow tanker network that smuggled crude oil on behalf of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, according to reports on the ship’s tracking data.
At the time, the U.S. Treasury Department said the network was reportedly run by a Ukrainian oil trader based in Switzerland.
Seizure raises tension to new heights
On Tuesday, the U.S. military flew two fighter jets over the Gulf of Venezuela, in what appears to be the closest approach by fighter jets to Venezuelan airspace since the start of the regime’s pressure campaign.
The United States has deployed its largest military presence in the region in decades, launching a series of deadly attacks against suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean.
President Trump has previously said a ground attack is coming, but he has not provided details about its location or scale.
A telephone conversation between the two leaders took place late last month, with President Maduro saying at the time that it was a potential step toward “respectful dialogue.”