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The US coastguard intercepted and boarded a tanker transporting Venezuelan oil in the Caribbean on Saturday, as Washington continues to ratchet up pressure on the regime of autocratic president Nicolás Maduro.
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said the pre-dawn action against the vessel was carried out with the assistance of the defence department.
It marks the second time US forces have apprehended an oil tanker on route from Venezuela following its seizure of Skipper on December 10.
“The United State will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region. We will find you, and we will stop you,” Noem said in a social media post.
The seizure by the US coastguard of the Panamanian flagged tanker named Centuries follows Donald Trump’s order this week for “a total and complete” blockade of sanctioned oil tankers travelling to and from Venezuela.
It comes as the president weighs taking military action on Venezuelan soil, expanding his campaign to crack down on drug traffickers based in the country and raising pressure on Maduro to step down.
Maduro, who is regarded by the US and many of its allies as having stolen last year’s vote to win re-election, has relied on a “shadow fleet” of tankers to evade sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector. About 80 per cent of the country’s 900,000 b/d crude exports are sent to China via intermediaries, providing a crucial source of dollars for Maduro’s cash-strapped regime.
The Centuries does not appear on US sanctions lists but Kpler, a real time data and analytics firm, said it had previously loaded sanctioned cargos. Satellite images showed the tanker loaded crude at Venezuela’s Jose Oil Terminal in recent days and had been spoofing its automatic identifying positioning system, it said.
“The VLCC Centuries is not included on sanction lists from US, EU, UK, or UN as of today . . . the same applies to her owners and managers, even though the vessel has been spotted numerous times to have loaded sanctioned cargo and engaging in deceptive shipping practices,” said Dimitris Ampatzidis, senior risk and compliance analyst at Kpler.
The US has amassed its largest military build-up in the Caribbean Sea since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in what is widely seen as an effort to pressure Maduro to leave power.
“His days are numbered,” Trump said of Maduro in an interview with Politico conducted on December 8.
