US seizes second oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela

The US Coast Guard boarded a tanker this Saturday carrying Venezuelan oil. Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, confirmed that the vessel had been “intercepted”. It was the second US action in recent days against a Venezuelan oil tanker.

The United States seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, reinforcing a “blockade” ordered by the president Donald Trumpaccording to a North American official and two people linked to the Venezuelan oil industry.

These three sources provided statements on condition of anonymity, as this is a sensitive topic at this time.

The approach is to second action of the United Statesthis month, against a tanker carrying Venezuelan crude bound for Asia, after last week off the Venezuelan coast.

The Coast Guard’s action intensifies the Trump pressure campaign about the Venezuelan leader, Nicolas Madurowhich the North American president has accused of flooding the United States with fentanyl and stealing oil to North American companies, without providing evidence.

On Tuesday, Trump had announced “a total and complete blocking to all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.” However, the ship now boarded, called Centuries and registered in Panamais not on the list of entities under US sanctionspublicly maintained by the Treasury Department.

According to Venezuelan oil industry sources, the Centuries cargo belongs to a China-based oil operatorestablished and with a history of transporting Venezuelan crude to Chinese refineries. The ship had recently left Venezuela and was in Caribbean waters.

In a statement cited by the NYT, the Venezuelan government stated that the country “denounces and categorically rejects robbery and kidnapping of another private vessel transporting Venezuelan oil, as well as the forced disappearance of its crew.”

Kristi Noemsecretary of Homeland Security, in a post on the social network X that the Coast Guard had “intercepted” a tanker that had been docked in Venezuela. “The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil used to finance narco-terrorism in the region,” he wrote. “We will find you and we will stop you”.

Noem also published a video that appears to show US forces descend by ropes from a helicopter onto the ship’s deck.

It is unclear how long the US intended to keep the Centuries detained.

The US official who confirmed the approach said that US authorities did not have an arrest warrant to take possession of the ship, as happened in the case of the Skipper’s seizure, at the beginning of the month, which was sailing with false flag and was under sanctions North American companies for having previously transported Iranian crude.

In that case, U.S. authorities obtained an arrest warrant for the Skipper before a federal magistrate judge, based on the vessel’s connections to Iran, a country that, according to the United States, sells oil to finance terrorism.

International law provides that a ship can be boarded if there are reasonable grounds to believe thatand is not properly registered in the State whose flag it flies. The US official said the Coast Guard was trying to determine whether the Centuries’ registration in Panama was valid.

O Centuries has no known connection to Iran and there is no evidence that it transported Iranian oil, according to Venezuelan oil industry sources and data from .

The last six voyages involved the transport of Venezuelan crude, which the ship frequently transfers to other vessels on the high seas. These secondary ships then deliver the cargo to Chinawhich buys a significant part of Venezuelan oil.

The tanker, like many others that US law enforcement authorities refer to as “ghost fleet”, has also resorted to deceptive navigation practices to maintain this trade.

On their most recent trip to Venezuela, for example, Centuries issued a fake location hundreds of miles awaypretending to be in motion when, in reality, was loading oil at the portaccording to a Times analysis of maritime tracking data and satellite images.

This method of spoofing location data by ships is known as spoofing.