USA intercepted a third ship in international waters nearby this Sunday Venezuelan coastand intensified its operations to block trade in sanctioned oil comes from Venezuela. The action was confirmed to the agency by US officials Reuterscomes just hours after the seizure of a second oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea.
U.S. authorities have not provided this agency with the name or exact location of the vessel intercepted in this latest operation. However, Bloomberg reported that it would be the oil tanker Bella 1, which sails under the Panamanian flag and has been sanctioned by the United States.
This weekend’s seizures come just days after the president Donald Trump announced a complete “blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela, increasing the pressure campaign on the Venezuelan regime. Nicolas Maduro.
On Saturday, the US also intercepted a second oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. According to the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi NoemThe Coast Guard The United States Attorney General, with the assistance of the War Department, carried out the operation before dawn on December 20th. Posting a video on social media showing a helicopter hovering over the deck of a large oil tanker at sea, Noem said: “The United States will continue to track the illegal movement of sanctioned oil used to finance narco-terrorism in the region. We will find it and stop it.”
The Venezuelan regime condemned the seizure of the second ship, calling it “robbery and kidnapping” and denouncing the “forced disappearance” of the crew. In a statement published on social networks, the vice president of the dictatorship said, Delcy Rodriguez, warned that those responsible for these events would face legal consequences. The Department of Homeland Security identified the ship as the centuriesa Panama-flagged Chinese tanker that reportedly loaded 1.8 million barrels of crude oil at a Venezuelan port before being escorted out of the country’s exclusive economic zone on December 18. However, an independent review found that Centuries is not on the US Treasury Department’s official sanctions list.
Deputy White House Speaker Anna Kellyclaimed that the Centuries was transporting sanctioned oil from the Venezuelan state company PDVSA and described it as “a false flag vessel operating as part of the Venezuelan Shadow Fleet.”
The first of these recent operations occurred on December 10, when U.S. forces seized another large oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela that was allegedly involved in transporting sanctioned crude oil to Iran. These measures are part of a broader strategy by Washington, which has increased its military presence in the Caribbean with the stated aim of combating drug trafficking, but with a particular focus on Venezuela.
The Venezuelan Defense Minister, Vladimir Padrino Lopezaddressed the situation in an event broadcast on state television, where he denounced a campaign of “lies, manipulation, interventionism, military threats, psychological warfare and psychological terrorism” and assured that such actions “will not intimidate us.”
Currently, U.S. military operations in the Caribbean include 11 warships, including the world’s largest aircraft carrier, an amphibious assault ship, two amphibious transport ships, two cruisers and five destroyers. In addition, the U.S. military has carried out airstrikes since September against suspected drug trafficking ships in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing more than 100 people, according to figures not confirmed by independent sources. These operations have raised questions about their legality and fueled political controversy surrounding the US election campaign.
While Washington defends the legality and necessity of its measures to stop illicit financing and drug trafficking, Caracas He claims this is an offensive to overthrow Maduro and seize Venezuelan oil, calling the wiretaps acts of “maritime piracy.”
The Venezuelan government has reiterated that it will take legal action against those it considers responsible for these acts and stressed that it will not allow these acts to go unanswered.
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