Trump ordered last Tuesday to impose a “total and complete blockade” on all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela.
LIMA, Peru – The United States intercepted a second oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, in international waters, according to the agency. Reuters this Saturday three American officials.
The confiscation comes just days after President Donald Trump gave the order to impose a “total and complete blockade” on all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela, in a new escalation of pressure against the Nicolás Maduro regime.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to Reuters, did not say where the operation was taking place, but added that the Coast Guard was in charge.
“The Coast Guard and the Pentagon referred queries to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Venezuela’s Oil Ministry and state-owned company PDVSA also did not immediately respond to requests for comment,” the British agency notes.
This is also the second ship with crude oil that the US seizes from the Chavista regime in recent weeks. The first of them, as it was known at the time, was heading to Cuba.
In this regard, the American newspaper The New York Times On December 12, he exposed in a publication the oil resale scheme with which Nicolás Maduro subsidizes Havana in international markets.
The naked resale scheme
The Venezuelan ship Skipper was seized on December 10 by United States forces off the coast of Venezuela, heading to Cuba, where the state company Cubametales expected to receive a substantial part of the crude oil shipment to resell it to Asian intermediaries, according to documents from the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, maritime monitoring data and officials cited by media such as AP, Reuters and POLITICAL.
Cubametales is the Cuban state company in charge of the import and export of oil. The US Department of the Treasury He sanctioned her in 2019when he pointed out it as “the Cuban state oil importing and exporting company” and accused it of continuing to receive Venezuelan crude oil despite the sanctions against PDVSA. Since then, Washington considers it a central cog in the scheme that allows Havana to obtain oil in exchange for political, security and intelligence support for the Nicolás Maduro regime.
“Most of the oil allocated to Cuba has been, instead, resold to China, and the money has provided much-needed foreign exchange for the Cuban government,” people close to the Chavista government assured the North American newspaper.
In recent years, the The New York Timesonly a fraction of the Venezuelan oil destined for Cuba has actually reached the Island.
According to the publication, the main person managing the flow of oil between Cuba and Venezuela is a Panamanian businessman named Ramón Carretero, sanctioned this month by the US.
The US Treasury Department recently reported that Carretero has facilitated the shipment of petroleum products on behalf of the Venezuelan government. “He has participated in lucrative contracts with the Maduro regime and has had various business relationships with the Maduro-Flores family, including association in several companies,” he stressed.
PDVSA documents indicate that Cubametales has obtained contracts to purchase around 65,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan oil so far in 2025. This represents an increase of 29% compared to 2024 and seven times more compared to the previous year.
According to the American newspaper, “the travel history of the Skipper “It points to a broader, more flexible network connecting the energy industries of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and Russia, the four US adversaries that have been, to varying degrees, excluded from the formal global oil market by Washington sanctions.”
In this regard, a US official stated that the crew of the seized ship was made up of about 30 sailors, mostly Russian.
