Us Seizes Cuba-bound Venezuelan Oil Tanker, Ramping Up Pressure On Maduro

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that U.S. forces have seized a “very large” oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a major escalation of the administration’s months of efforts to punish the South American petrostate.

“As you probably know we have just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually,” Trump said at an event at the White House. "It was seized for a very good reason.”

The White House did not provide additional details about the vessel. But a person familiar with the matter, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive seizure, said the ship was en route to Cuba, where the state firm Cubametales was planning to sell it to Asian energy brokers.

Bloomberg first reported on the seizure of the tanker.

The action occurred two days after an interview with POLITICO in which Trump repeatedly declined to rule out sending troops to Venezuela to bring down leader Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump accused of exporting drugs and criminals to the United States. The Trump administration has spent months pressuring Maduro to cede power to the opposition, an escalation which has included restoring sanctions, building up the U.S. military presence in the Caribbean and using lethal force against boats the U.S. alleges are trafficking drugs in concert with the Venezuelan military.

Cuba’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Attempts to reach Venezuela’s national oil company Petróleos de Venezuela were unsuccessful.

Given U.S. sanctions, most of Venezuela’s oil production goes to China, including through third-party countries or on shadow tankers without tracking software.

Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at commodity tracking firm Kpler, said the ship seized Wednesday was not commercially trackable and probably had its automatic identification system turned off.

The seizure could put pressure on shippers to stop taking Venezuelan crude, potentially tightening global oil supplies. U.S. crude prices jumped 1 percent Wednesday afternoon, to just under $59 a barrel. Trump, who has repeatedly pointed to declining gasoline prices amid voters’ complaints about the rising cost of living, repeated his claim Wednesday that gasoline prices had dropped to $1.99 a gallon.

Jorge León, senior vice president and head of geopolitical analysis for Rystad Energy, said in a text message that the seizure is a “clear escalation from financial sanctions to physical interdiction — it raises the stakes for Caracas and anyone facilitating its exports.”

“This kind of action adds a geopolitical floor to prices: Even modest volumes can move sentiment when the risk is about sea lanes and state-to-state escalation,” León said.

But David Goldwyn, head of the international energy consulting firm Goldwyn Global Strategies and a former State Department official in the Obama administration, said the impact on Venezuelan oil exports is likely to be “modest” as long as the ship was on the U.S. sanctions list.

“Chinese trade for the most part is not going on sanctioned vessels,” Goldwyn said. He said most exports are likely to continue “unless Chinese importers are foolish enough to use sanctioned vessels” or the administration shifts its policy to interdict all vessels carrying Venezuelan crude.

Goldwyn said the U.S. has the authority to seize vessels on the Treasury Department’s “Specially Designated Nationals” list, but the power has been rarely exercised.

“The U.S. has not seized ships on the SDN recently that I am aware of, but largely because we have not had flotillas off the shores of Iran or Russia, nor has it been a mission for the U.S. Navy to seize these sanctions violators,” he said. “The U.S. has largely made it hard for these designated companies and shippers to participate in international commerce because no legitimate company or bank wants to transact with an SDN.”

Chevron is the only U.S. producer still operating in Venezuela, under a license the Trump administration renewed earlier this year.

Bill Turenne, a Chevron spokesperson, said the company’s operations in the country “continue without disruption and in full compliance with laws and regulations applicable to its business,” and directed questions about the security situation to the U.S. government.

Isa Domínguez contributed to this report.