The US intercepted two oil tankers this weekend under the orders of President Donald Trump, who has ordered to block all sanctioned tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro has described the action as an act of “privateers” while denouncing the “forced disappearance” of the crew of the Centuries ship.
This Sunday, the United States intercepted a third oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea, near the coast of Venezuela, according to US media, one day after the seizure of the Centuries tanker that, according to Washington, was trafficking “sanctioned crude oil” within the Venezuelan “ghost fleet.”
The condition of the ship is unknown and it is not yet clear if it was transporting Venezuelan crude, confirmed a US official cited by the network. CNN in Spanish.
Sources told Axios that US forces were pursuing the tanker, identified as the Panamanian-flagged vessel Bella 1, and that it was sighted on its way to load oil in Venezuela.
According to the digital media, the Bella 1, sanctioned by the Treasury Department, was sailing under a false flag while being pursued by the United States.
consulted by the EFE agencythe Pentagon and the Coast Guard referred all questions about the operation to the White House, which has not yet corroborated the reports about the ongoing action or whether they have already boarded the tanker.
This is the second tanker that the US intercepts this weekend under the orders of President Donald Trump, and the third after his administration’s intensified efforts to cut off the flow of oil from Venezuela.
*Read also: The US will continue “pursuing the illicit movement of oil,” says Secretary Noem
The Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, reported on Saturday about the confiscation of the Panamanian-flagged tanker Centuries, which, according to the White House, was a “false flag” vessel part of “the Venezuelan ghost fleet to traffic stolen oil and finance Maduro’s narco-terrorist regime.”
On December 10, the US seized the sanctioned ship Skipper and confiscated the crude oil it was transporting.
Days later, Trump ordered a total blockade of oil tankers sanctioned by the US Government that enter and leave Venezuela, within the pressure he exerts on Nicolás Maduro, whom he accuses of leading a drug trafficking network.
The director of the White House National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, stated that the first two oil tankers seized operated on the black market and supplied oil to sanctioned countries. “So I don’t think people in the United States should be worried about prices going up because of the seizures of these ships.”
However, an oil operator stated to Reuters that the seizures pose geopolitical risks and will likely drive oil prices higher when operations in Asia resume on Monday. On the other hand, expectations of an end to the war in Ukraine could help contain the rise in oil prices, he added.
Since August, the United States has maintained an extensive military deployment in the Caribbean Sea and the Western Pacific as part of an anti-drug campaign in which it has destroyed some 30 boats apparently linked to drug trafficking and killed more than a hundred of its crew members.
Maduro rejected the seizure of the Centuries and described it as a “robbery and kidnapping” by the United States of “a new private ship” that transported Venezuelan crude oil.
*Journalism in Venezuela is carried out in a hostile environment for the press with dozens of legal instruments in place to punish the word, especially the laws “against hate”, “against fascism” and “against the blockade.” This content was written taking into consideration the threats and limits that, consequently, have been imposed on the dissemination of information from within the country.
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