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Gunboat Diplomacy Accelerated: US Seizes Another Oil Tanker Off Venezuela’s Coast
Update:
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem confirmed that the U.S. Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, has seized another oil tanker that was last docked in Venezuela.
“The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil used to fund narco-terrorism in the region. We will find you, and we will stop you,” Noem wrote in a post on X.
Reuters reported earlier about the operation.
* * *
President Trump’s gunboat diplomacy is aimed at disrupting crude oil flows moving from Venezuela to Cuba and onward to China. The foreign-policy campaign began earlier this year with U.S. warships stationed off Venezuela’s coast in international waters, but it accelerated sharply weeks ago with the U.S. seizure of a sanctioned tanker in the Caribbean and has now escalated further with reports that another tanker was intercepted and seized.
Reuters cites three U.S. officials on Saturday morning who said U.S. forces are interdicting and seizing another tanker off the coast of Venezuela in international waters. This could mark the second such seizure in weeks and comes days after Trump announced a “blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers in the Venezuela region.
Apparently, U.S. Coast Guard teams are leading this operation amid a broader U.S. military buildup in the region, though officials have not disclosed the exact location of the latest tanker seizure.
Trump’s gunboat diplomacy is aimed at the country’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro. This ploy could accelerate regime instability in Caracas and materially weaken Cuba.
“Their theory of change involves cutting off all support to Cuba,” Juan S. Gonzalez, who was President Joe Biden’s top White House aide for Western Hemisphere affairs, recently said. “Under this approach, once Venezuela goes, Cuba will follow.”
On Tuesday, Trump ordered a “total and complete blockade“ of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela. He further boasted of the country having been “completely surrounded” with the “largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America.”
He then warned, “It [the blockade] will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
Brent crude markets slipped underneath $60/bbl last week, ending the week at $60.57, as traders appear numb to Trump’s gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean.
We’re surprised Beijing hasn’t lashed out at the U.S. for such actions in the Caribbean, given that this disrupts oil trade flows from West to East. Perhaps a deal was made at the Trump-Xi meeting in the fall.
Hunting Season: US Forces Target Third ‘Dark Fleet’ Tanker Near Venezuela
Update (1610ET):
It’s hunting season for U.S. forces off the Venezuelan coast, in international waters, as gunboat diplomacy ramps up with the pursuit of yet another sanctioned oil tanker.
AP News spoke with a U.S. official on Sunday who said Coast Guard forces were pursuing a “sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion.”
The official said the tanker was operating under a false flag and was subject to a judicial seizure order.
On Saturday, Coast Guard forces seized a Panama-flagged tanker called Centuries, which Trump administration officials described as a “falsely flagged vessel operating as part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet to traffic stolen oil.”
Earlier this month, the U.S. seized the sanctioned VLCC, Skipper. Now the tanker is about one day out to the Galveston Offshore Lightering Area (GOLA).
We have pointed out that Trump’s gunboat diplomacy is a foreign policy objective aimed at accelerating regime instability in Caracas and materially weakening Cuba.
The Wall Street Journal warned Sunday that Trump’s move to disrupt Venezuela-Cuba oil flows is already ratcheting up pressure on Havana.
“It would be the collapse of the Cuban economy, no question about it,” Jorge Piñón, a Cuban exile who tracks the island’s energy ties to Venezuela at the University of Texas at Austin, told WSJ.
Given the crude oil flows from Venezuela to Cuba to China. We’re kind of surprised Beijing hasn’t been criticizing Trump’s strategy in the Caribbean region.
* * *
President Trump’s gunboat diplomacy against Venezuela’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, has moved full steam ahead. U.S. forces have seized two sanctioned “dark fleet” oil tankers, with the latest interception carried out during an early Saturday morning operation by the U.S. Coast Guard off the coast of Venezuela.
The first seizure occurred earlier this month, involving the VLCC Skipper, and sent shockwaves through the Caribbean region. At the time, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Skipper was en route to a U.S. port and that the United States intended to seize the oil.
However, with the second tanker now seized and its name yet to be released, Skipper had faded from the news cycle until now.
Research firm TankerTrackers provided an update on Saturday evening, indicating Skipper’s location is about 1 day from Galveston, Texas.
“An update on SKIPPER (9304667): We are tracking her movements by satellite imagery (just to confirm the AIS data) and can see that she is about a day away from reaching GOLA (Galveston Offshore Lightering Area) where she will have to transfer her 1.85 million barrels cargo onto three smaller tankers in order to feed oil refineries in ports such as Houston,” TankerTrackers wrote on X.
GOLA is a designated offshore zone in the Gulf of America, located several miles off the coast of Galveston, Texas, where large crude oil tankers, such as the Skipper, conduct ship-to-ship oil transfers known as lightering.
Given Leavitt’s comments about the U.S. seizing Skipper’s crude, we suspect the ship-to-ship oil transfer will take place at GOLA. In fact, when the tanker was just north of Saint Lucia in the eastern Caribbean Sea, we provided readers with a list of possible port calls in the Gulf of America.
We suspect yesterday’s seizure of the sanctioned tanker will soon follow a similar path.
Trump’s gunboat diplomacy is only ramping up. There will be more dark fleet oil tankers commandeered by U.S. forces, whose foreign policy objective is to accelerate regime instability in Caracas and materially weaken Cuba.
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