U.S. officials told Reuters on January 15th that they had seized an additional oil tanker linked to Venezuela, ahead of a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
This seizure marks the sixth vessel targeted in recent weeks, either currently carrying Venezuelan oil or having transported it in the past. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, stated that the seizure occurred in the Caribbean Sea.
The U.S. Southern Command confirmed the pre-dawn operation, stating that U.S. forces boarded the Motor/Tanker Veronica “without incident.” They noted that the Veronica was “operating in defiance of sanctions imposed on vessels in the Caribbean by President Trump.”
“Only legally and properly coordinated oil will leave Venezuela,” the Southern Command stated in a release.
President Donald Trump declared that the United States plans to control Venezuela’s oil resources indefinitely as it seeks to rebuild the country’s deteriorating oil industry.
The intercepted vessels to date have either been under U.S. sanctions or part of a “ghost fleet” of unregulated ships that conceal their origins to transport oil from sanctioned major producers—Iran, Russia, or Venezuela.
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