The Venezuelan Navy has begun to escort oil tankers coming from the country’s eastern coasts on the way to the high seas, according to information This decision by the Nicolás Maduro regime comes one day after the announcement by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to block all sanctioned cargo ships that trade with Venezuela.
The threat is part of Trump’s offensive against the Maduro government, and of having ties to the criminal gang the Tren de Aragua.
The NYT reports that the first escorted ships transport oil derivatives and crude oil refining byproducts from the port of José, and were on their way to be offered in Asian markets. These are ships that are not on the list of those sanctioned by Washington.
It was triggered almost a week ago, when special US troops deployed in the Caribbean Sea assaulted and neutralized a sanctioned Venezuelan oil tanker – “big, very big,” as President Trump himself described it. The military operation caused a heated protest from the Venezuelan Government, and has continued to add new twists of military and diplomatic tension between the two countries. “They took away our rights. We had a lot of oil there. They expelled our companies and we want it back,” Trump said this Wednesday.
The US authorities are aware of the decision taken in Caracas, according to information from the NYT, and are studying alternatives to respond. Washington seems determined to continue seizing suspected oil tankers.
Meanwhile, PDVSA also appears to ship domestic crude oil. This Wednesday there was some alarm in economic news circles in the country, particularly due to the serious consequences that the blockade announced by Trump would have on national income, the cost of currency, food prices and the pockets of Venezuelan families.
The United States has imposed oil sanctions on Venezuela since 2019, accusing the government of Nicolás Maduro of having falsified the 2018 elections, violated human rights and undermined the foundations of democracy. Since then, Petróleos de Venezuela has had many problems acquiring spare parts, finding contractors, doing maintenance work or selling its oil without intermediaries or with significant discounts.
The disastrous Chavista administration in PDVSA, and the difficulties in placing crude oil in the markets as a result of the sanctions – among other factors – generated a historic collapse in national oil production: from three million barrels per day to 500,000 in 2020.
Since then, the Maduro Government has been building a new network of suppliers, technicians and allies in the energy world from friendly nations, such as Iran, Russia or Turkey, to be able to attend to the most urgent maintenance tasks. For several years, the country sold its oil in very opaque operations: on ships with the flags of other countries, in exchanges that took place on the high seas after a complex triangulation of destinations. In addition, it did so with great discounts.
The Democratic government of Joe Biden made important concessions to Chavismo within the framework of the Barbados agreements, conditional on the organization of clean and credible elections. From then on, Washington issued several special licenses that allowed some international companies to exploit Venezuelan oil. The most beneficiary has been Chevron. PDVSA, meanwhile, brought some order to its internal chaos and moderately recovered its own production. Right now, Venezuela produces about one million barrels of oil per day.
The failure of the Barbados agreements and the political crisis unleashed after the controversial electoral result of the 2024 presidential elections – in which and an unprecedented wave of repression – seem to have become the straw that broke the camel’s back in the White House.
From then on – with the intermediation of Marco Rubio and the influence of María Corina Machado – Venezuela and Chavismo fully entered Trump’s agenda.
