Troops board Aquila II tanker in Indian Ocean after 15,000km chase
Washington: The US military boarded a sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean heading for Indonesia’s Sunda Strait after tracking the ship nearly 15,000 kilometers from the Caribbean.
The U.S. Department of Defense said the Aquila II, part of a shadow fleet of tankers carrying sanctioned oil around the world, fled the area in early January after U.S. forces captured then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
The United States “pursued and hunted” the ship from the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean, where military forces boarded the tanker within the Indo-Pacific command’s area of responsibility; However, the Pentagon did not say that the ship was seized.
“Aquila II was operating in defiance of the President [Donald] Trump imposed quarantine on sanctioned ships in the Caribbean. He ran away and we followed him,” the Pentagon said.
“No other nation on planet Earth has the capacity to enforce its will in any area. Our Armed Forces will find you on land, in the air or at sea and will deliver justice. You will run out of fuel long before you escape us.”
“The War Department will deny illicit actors and their proxies the ability to challenge American power in the global maritime domain.”
The Pentagon would not provide further details about the tanker’s exact location or journey when asked, but Bloomberg News reported that the tanker’s last known location was in the Indian Ocean toward the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, based on ship tracking data.
This falls southwest of Australia’s Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
Later, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told an audience of defense contractor workers in Maine that the ship was “seized” to make sure the oil was “sold properly.”
It is the latest in a series of tankers the United States has boarded and seized as part of its campaign to halt the transportation of sanctioned oil and gain direct control of Venezuela’s oil resources, the largest proven reserves in the world. It is by far the farthest place from Venezuela where a tanker is known to have been seized.
Aquila II is a Panama-flagged tanker subject to US sanctions for the transportation of illicit Russian oil.
Tracking data for the ship, whose address belongs to a company registered in Hong Kong, shows that it spent most of last year with its radio transponder turned off; This is a practice known as “staying dark” that smugglers commonly use to conceal their location.
According to data from TankerTrackers.com, the ship was sanctioned by the United States at the end of the Biden administration in January 2025, and by the United Kingdom and the European Union later that year.
The seizure came as Hegseth toured a number of defense companies in Maine and Rhode Island, including the hull works of US Navy contractor General Dynamic Electric Boat, which is producing the Virginia-class submarines that Australia will purchase under the AUKUS agreement.
Hegseth used this visit to rail against diversity and transgender people. “The stupidest thing I’ve heard from generals is ‘our diversity is our strength.’ That’s the stupidest statement in military history,” he said.
“We’re getting rid of all the distractions – DEI, climate change. No more men in dresses,” Hegseth said, to cheers and applause from some in the room.
Last month, US forces boarded a Russian-flagged tanker off the coast of Iceland, intending to return from Venezuela and cross the North Sea to its home port. French commandos carried out a similar action against a “shadow fleet” ship off the coast of France last year.
Meanwhile, the European Union has also proposed expanding its sanctions against Russia to include ports in Georgia and Indonesia where Russian oil is handled, Reuters reported this week, citing a proposal document; This will be the first time the bloc will target ports of third-party countries, it said.
The proposal would add Georgia’s Kulevi and Indonesia’s Karimun to the sanctions list, banning EU companies and individuals from dealing with any of these ports.
The measures form part of the EU’s 20th sanctions package over Russia’s war in Ukraine. Unanimity is required for EU sanctions to become law.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political correspondent in Canberra.Connect with: X or email.
