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US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the United States has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, as tensions with the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro continue to rise.
“We have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a large, very large oil tanker, the largest ever seized, in fact,” Trump told reporters at the White House, stressing that “it was seized for a very good reason.”
Trump added that “other things are going on,” although he did not offer further details and said he would talk about it later.
Venezuela’s government condemned the seizure, calling it “a blatant theft and an act of international piracy.”
A statement from the foreign ministry said, “Under these circumstances, the true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed. It has always been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy and the resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people.”
The latest development ramps up pressure on Maduro, whom Washington has charged with narcoterrorism.
According to an unnamed US official, the seizure was carried out in an operation led by the US Coast Guard and supported by the Navy.
What do we know about the oil tanker?
US Attorney General Pam Bondi shared a video on social media showing US forces fast-roping from one of the operation’s helicopters, hovering just feet from the deck. Later in the footage, the Coast Guard members can be seen going about the ship’s superstructure while brandishing their weapons.
The seized tanker, identified in US media as the “Skipper”, reportedly departed Venezuela around 2 December 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.
According to reports on the ship’s tracking data, the oil tanker was previously known as the M/T Adisa, and was sanctioned by the US in 2022 over accusations it belonged 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 US Treasury Department said at the time.
Seizure raises tensions to a new high
On Tuesday, the US military flew a pair of 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 administration’s pressure campaign.
The US has deployed its largest military presence in the region in decades and has launched a series of deadly strikes against alleged drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.
Trump has previously said that ground attacks are coming, although he has not offered details on their location or scale.
A phone conversation took place between the two leaders late last month, which Maduro described as a potential step towards “respectful dialogue” at the time.