The United States stopped an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on Sunday, just a day after the Coast Guard boarded another oil vessel, according to a report from Bloomberg.
The operation, which is not approved by Congress, is part of President Trump’s “blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into, and out of, Venezuela” in a campaign to cut an essential export that accounts for more than half of Venezuela’s revenue. Some international treaties consider blockades as an act of war.
Trump has called Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro’s administration a “foreign terrorist organization” that is using sanctioned oil to fund drug trafficking.
The US is also continuing its strikes on boats allegedly holding illicit drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. According to the Trump administration, at least 104 people have been killed in 28 boat strikes. House Republicans rejected two Democratic-supported resolutions on Wednesday that would have forced Trump to get authorization from Congress to continue military attacks on these alleged terrorist organizations and its campaign against Venezuela.
Bloomberg reported that the most recent tanker, the Bella 1, was a Panamanian-flagged ship sanctioned by the US and was on its way to Venezuela for loading.
Officials did not disclose the specific location of where the ship was seized.
The Centuries tanker, the vessel intercepted on Saturday, did not appear on the US list of vessels under sanction and is registered in Panama, according to the New York Times. The ship belongs to a Chinese-based oil trading company that moves Venezuelan oil to Chinese refineries.
But White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly asserted on X that the tanker held Venezuela state-owned oil, which is sanctioned.
“It was a falsely flagged vessel operating as part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet to traffic stolen oil and fund the narcoterrorist Maduro regime,” Kelly wrote.
This blockade goes well beyond political battles—they have a true human cost in Venezuela. As my colleague, Katie Herchenroeder, cited from Francisco J. Monaldi, director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University on Wednesday, “Cutting off all oil revenue will lead to a massive reduction in food imports and is likely to trigger the first major famine in the Western Hemisphere in modern history.”
