By Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart, Steve Holland and Marianna Parraga
Washington — President Donald Trump says US forces have seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, sendingoil prices higher and sharply escalated tensions between Washington and Caracas.
“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, large tanker, very large, the largest one ever, actually, and other things are happening,” said Trump, who has been pressuring Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step down.
Asked what would happen with the oil Trump said on Wednesday: “We keep it, I guess.”
Oil prices fell more than $1 on Thursday. Brent crude futures were down $1.1, or 1.8%, at $61.11 a barrel at 2.08pm GMT, hovering near the lowest since October 21 as investors shifted focus back to Russia-Ukraine peace talks and monitored potential fallout from the US seizure of the tanker.
Read: EDITORIAL: Venezuela-US tensions: world on the precipice of disaster
In response, the Venezuelan government accused the US of “blatant theft” and described the seizure as “an act of international piracy”. It said in the statement it would denounce the incident before international bodies.
Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of US military intervention in Venezuela. The seizure is the first of a Venezuelan oil cargo amid US sanctions that have been in force since 2019. It is also the Trump administration’s first known action against a Venezuela-related tanker since he ordered a big military buildup in the region.
The US has already carried out several strikes against suspected drug vessels, which has raised concerns among legislators and legal experts.
US attorney-general Pam Bondi posted on X that the FBI, Homeland Security and the Coast Guard, along with support from the US military, carried out a seizure warrant for a crude tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran.
A 45-second video posted by Bondi showed two helicopters approaching a vessel and armed individuals in camouflage rappelling onto it.
Iran’s embassy in Caracas condemned the action as a “grave violation of international laws and norms” in a post on X on Thursday.
Trump administration officials did not name the vessel or disclose its location at the time of the seizure.
British maritime risk management group Vanguard said the very large crude carrier Skipper was believed to have been seized off Venezuela early on Wednesday. The US has imposed sanctions on the tanker for what it says was involvement in Iranian oil trading when the vessel was called the Adisa.
The Skipper left Venezuela’s main oil port of Jose between December 4 and 5 after loading some 1.8 million barrels of Venezuela’s Merey heavy crude. It transferred about 200,000 barrels near Curacao to the Panama-flagged Neptune 6 bound for Cuba before the seizure, according to satellite information analysed by TankerTrackers.com and internal data from Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA.
Guyana’s maritime authority said Skipper was falsely flying the country’s flag. The vessel had transported Venezuelan oil to Asia between 2021 and 2022, the PDVSA data showed.
Maduro spoke at a march on Wednesday without addressing reports of the seizure.
Impact on oil
Venezuela exported more than 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil last month, the third-highest monthly average so far this year, as PDVSA imported more naphtha to dilute its extra-heavy oil output. Even as Washington increased pressure on Maduro, Trump’s administration had not previously moved to interfere with oil flows.
Venezuela has had to deeply discount its crude to its main buyer China, due to growing competition with sanctioned oil from Russia and Iran.
“This is just yet another geopolitical/sanctions headwind hammering spot supply availability,” Rory Johnston, an analyst with Commodity Context, said.
“Seizing this tanker further inflames those prompt supply concerns but also doesn’t immediately change the situation fundamentally because these barrels were already going to be floating around for a while,” Johnston said.
Reuters
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