U.S. Preparing To Seize More Tankers Off Venezuela’s Coast, Sources Say

HOUSTON/LONDON/WASHINGTON, Dec 11 (Reuters) – The United States is preparing to stop more ships carrying Venezuelan oil as it increases pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro following the seizure of a tanker this week, six sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

This seizure was the first interdiction of an oil cargo or tanker from Venezuela under US sanctions since 2019. This comes as the United States is embarking on a large-scale military build-up in the Southern Caribbean and US President Donald Trump is pushing for the ouster of Maduro. Shipping sources said the latest U.S. action has alarmed shipowners, operators and shipping agencies involved in transporting Venezuelan crude, with many reconsidering whether to sail from Venezuelan waters in the coming days as planned.

According to sources familiar with the matter, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, further direct US interventions are expected in the coming weeks to target ships carrying Venezuelan oil, which may also be carrying oil from other countries targeted by US sanctions, such as Iran.

Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA did not respond to a request for comment. Venezuela’s government said this week that the US seizure constituted a “theft”.

Asked whether the Trump administration plans to seize more ships, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters she would not talk about future actions but that the United States would continue to enforce the president’s sanctions policies.

“We will not stand by and watch sanctioned ships sail the seas carrying black market oil, the revenues of which will fuel the narcoterrorism of rogue and illegitimate regimes around the world,” he said.

According to one of the sources familiar with the matter, the US has prepared a target list that includes several more sanctioned tankers for possible seizure.

The U.S. Department of Justice and Homeland Security had been planning these seizures for months, according to two of the sources.

A reduction or halt in Venezuelan oil exports, the main source of revenue for the Venezuelan government, could strain the Maduro government’s finances.

The U.S. Treasury said Thursday it has sanctioned six supertankers that recently loaded crude oil in Venezuela and four Venezuelans, including three relatives of the country’s first lady, Cilia Flores, according to PDVSA’s internal documents and ship tracking data. It was not known whether the newly sanctioned ships were among those currently targeted for interception.

Wednesday’s seizure comes after the United States launched more than 20 attacks against drug ships in the Caribbean and Pacific in recent months, killing more than 80 people. While experts say the attacks could be illegal, extrajudicial attacks, the United States says it is protecting Americans from drug cartels, which it labels as terrorist organizations.

More ship seizures may be aimed at tightening financial restrictions on Maduro, according to a source familiar with U.S. policy on Venezuela. Maduro claimed that the US military build-up was aimed at overthrowing him and seizing control of the OPEC nation’s oil resources.

The new US tactic focuses on the activities of the so-called shadow fleet of tankers that transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran to China, the largest buyer of crude oil. Sources added that a single ship will often make separate voyages on behalf of Iran, Venezuela and Russia.

The seizure of the tanker, named Skipper, caused at least one shipper to temporarily suspend sailings of three newly loaded shipments totaling about 6 million barrels from Venezuela’s flagship Merey, the sources said.

“The cargo had just been loaded and was about to head to Asia,” said a trade executive involved in trading and shipping Venezuelan oil. “The sailings have now been canceled and the tankers are waiting off the coast of Venezuela because it is safer to do so.”

One of the sources said US forces were monitoring tankers at sea and some ships under repair or loading in Venezuelan ports and were waiting for them to sail into international waters before taking action.

Another source said US forces had stepped up surveillance in waters near Venezuela and neighboring Guyana ahead of the seizure of the Skipper, which was previously sanctioned for trading oil with Iran.

At the White House, Leavitt said the seized ship was expected to head to a U.S. port where the government plans to seize the oil cargo through a formal legal process.

The timing of further seizures will depend in part on how quickly arrangements can be made for ports to receive seized ships to offload oil cargoes, one of the sources said. Many of the ships in the approved oil-carrying shadow fleet are old, of uncertain ownership and sail without top-level insurance coverage. This will make many ports reluctant to accept ships.

Another ship, the Seahorse, which is under sanctions from the United Kingdom and the European Union over its oil trading links with Russia, was tracked by a U.S. warship in November and briefly detained before heading to Venezuela, one of the sources said.

While the Venezuelan government described the US seizure as an “international act of piracy”, legal experts said it did not fall under such definition under international law.

“The capture cannot be considered piracy because it was sanctioned and sanctioned by the United States,” said Laurence Atkin-Teillet, an expert on piracy and maritime law at Britain’s Nottingham Law School.

“The term piracy in this context appears to be a rhetorical or figurative term rather than a legal usage.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Saul in London, Marianna Parraga and Arathy Somasekhar in Houston, Matt Spetalnick and Andrea Shalal in Washington and Aizhu Chen in Singapore; Editing by Christian Plumb, Simon Webb, Rod Nickel)