Panama says it canceled flag of US-seized oil tanker a year ago
PANAMA CITY, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Panama’s maritime authority said on Thursday it had revoked the flag of the Venezuela-bound oil tanker M Sophia, which was seized by the United States in January last year. soldier this week.
The U.S. military’s Southern Command said it captured the MSophia before dawn on Wednesday, describing it as a “stateless, certified dark fleet motor tanker.” In a statement, the AMP official said that Panamanian authorities canceled the supertanker’s flag on January 23, 2025.
The maritime authority also said that the Russian-flagged tanker Bella-1, which the United States seized the same day after a two-week pursuit near Iceland, was once listed on the country’s registry, but that status expired as of Oct. 7, 2024.
A ship’s flag determines who has authority over it. The United States says that if a flag is revoked, it can become stateless, meaning it lacks protection under international law and could be boarded or even seized.
Panama’s maritime authority did not immediately respond to a request for more information about why the ships were no longer marked Panamanian.
Bella-1 appears to be the first incident in recent memory in which the US military has seized a Russian-flagged ship.
Wednesday’s tanker seizures were the third and fourth since the United States intercepted two ships in December and captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a pre-dawn raid on the capital Caracas, demanding that authorities there open the oil to US companies or risk further military intervention.
Senior Venezuelan officials have accused the United States of trying to steal the country’s vast oil reserves, estimated to be the world’s largest, but Trump said earlier this week he had reached an agreement with Maduro’s successor on crude oil exports.
(Reporting by Elida Moreno, Marianna Parraga and Sarah Morland; Editing by Daina Beth Solomon and Alistair Bell)
