What is the fleet of ghost ships that the United States accuses Venezuela of using to circumvent sanctions and export oil?

The Maduro government responded, calling the action a “brazen theft and act of piracy,” and said it would appeal to available international forums to denounce what happened.

The seizure adds to tensions with the Maduro government that have escalated since August, when the Trump administration launched a massive military operation in the Caribbean.

The official justification is the fight against drug trafficking, but analysts say the ultimate goal is to push for regime change in Venezuela.

In addition to its possible political objective, the measure has a direct economic effect, making Venezuelan oil exports even more difficult and increasing pressure on the so-called ghost fleet.

But what do we know about how these ships work?

The use of ghost fleets is an expanding phenomenon which is not limited to the Venezuelan case.

Countries like Russia and Iran, also oil producers and targets of sanctions by the United States and other Western powers, employ similar practices.

Financial intelligence firm S&P Global estimates that one in five oil tankers worldwide is used to smuggle oil from sanctioned countries.

Of this total, 10% would transport exclusively Venezuelan oil; 20%, Iranian oil; and 50%, Russian oil. The remaining 20% ​​would not be tied to a single country and could carry goods from several of these producers.

According to estimates by the maritime analysis company Windward, the clandestine fleet numbers around 1,300 ships.

Oil sanctions aim to discourage countries or companies from acquiring or participating in any oil-related operations from sanctioned countries.

This is why sanctioned countries choose to offer their oil at very reduced prices, to attract operators, companies or governments willing to take the risk of buying, of course applying some tricks to conceal the origin of the product.

One of the most common strategies used by oil companies to evade sanctions is to change their name or flag frequently, even several times in the same month.

The ship seized this Wednesday (12/10) is the ship The Skipper, according to CBS News, the BBC’s partner in the United States.

The channel reported that the tanker has been under sanctions from the US Treasury Department since 2022, for alleged membership in an oil smuggling network intended to finance the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.

According to CBS, at the time of the sanctions, the ship was called Adisa (and before that, The Tokyo) and was linked to Russian oil tycoon Viktor Artemov, who was also targeted by sanctions.

Commenting on the case this Wednesday (10/12), United States Attorney General Pam Bondi said on the social network X that the ship was used to transport oil from Venezuela and Iran, both subject to sanctions.

An interesting point about the Skipper ship is that it is 20 years old. This is another common feature of the ghost fleet: many ships are old, as large shipping companies usually abandon ships after 15 years of use, and after 25 years send them for dismantling.

Another trick used by these ships is the appropriation of the identity of ships already sent for dismantling, through the issuance of unique registration numbers assigned to these ships by the International Maritime Organization.

Thus, they become what are called zombie ships, because they operate as if someone is using the identity of a deceased person.

One such case linked to Venezuela occurred in April, when a ship called Varada arrived in Malaysian waters after setting sail two months earlier from Venezuela.

The ship carried two warning signs: It was 32 years old and sailing under the flag of the Comoros (east coast of Africa), popular with ships wishing to avoid detection.

An investigation by the Bloomberg agency revealed that the Varada was actually a ghost ship — the original had been dismantled in 2017 in Bangladesh (South Asia).

Other frequent practices of these ships include “concealing” the origin of oil, transferring goods in international waters to tankers without legal restrictions and under other flags.

These second vessels then head to the final destination and present the oil as if it came from an unsanctioned country.

This type of operation occurred, for example, in Venezuelan oil exports to China during the first term of the Trump administration.

According to experts interviewed by BBC News Mundo (Spanish service of the BBC), there was a time when official Chinese statistics indicated that the country did not buy oil from Venezuela, although in practice it did.

This was possible because some refineries acquired oil from these ships that had received the cargo in international waters and declared it as coming from non-sanctioned countries.

A final recurring trick among these tankers is to deactivate the automatic identification system (AIS), which transmits data such as the ship’s name, flag, position, speed and heading.

The manipulation of this information makes it possible to mask the identity, location and route of the vessel.

An investigation published by Bloomberg in April identified four zombie ships carrying Venezuelan oil.

The agency analyzed satellite images and compared them with historical photos of the ships whose names and identification numbers were used.

More recently, the NGO Transparency Venezuela published a report based on movements observed in the country’s oil ports in October this year.

According to the document, 71 foreign tankers were visibly operating at the ports of the Venezuelan state-owned company Pdvsa – the state-owned company responsible for the exploration, production and export of oil in the country; Among them, 15 are subject to sanctions and nine are linked to ghost fleets.

The NGO Transparency Venezuela has identified, on average, 24 oil tankers positioned near three ports in the west and east of the country, operating in stealth mode, without transmitting the obligatory location signals.

The organization also claims to have detected six operations involving the transfer of goods between ships in the Amuay Bay region of western Venezuela.

Furthermore, most of the ships sailed under the flag of countries considered tax havens, whose surveillance rules are more lenient and facilitate the operations of this type of ship.

Thus, of the 71 tankers identified, 29 were flying the flag of Panama, 6 of the Comoros and 5 of Malta.

In the Transparency Venezuela report, it is indicated that 38 of these ships went more than 20 days without docking, unlike the ships of the American oil company Chevron, authorized by the United States to operate in Venezuela, which arrive, load the oil and leave the country within six days.

“The prolonged stay in the country’s port areas, without docking directly at the oil terminals, raises serious doubts about the type of operations carried out by these ships,” declared the NGO, in reference to ships remaining for several days without docking.

In any case, as the interception and seizure operation began this Wednesday (10/12) from the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, the largest in the world, which is now part of the large American military deployment in the Caribbean, ahead of Venezuela, it is likely that the Maduro government’s ability to resort to the ghost fleet will be significantly reduced.