US navy forces boarded one other sanctioned tanker within the Indian Ocean after monitoring the vessel from the Caribbean Sea in an effort to focus on illicit oil related to Venezuela, the Pentagon stated on Sunday.
Venezuela had confronted US sanctions on its oil for a number of years, counting on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into world provide chains. Donald Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned tankers in December to stress the president, Nicolás Maduro, earlier than Maduro was apprehended in January throughout a US navy operation.
A number of tankers fled the Venezuelan coast after the raid, together with the ship that was boarded within the Indian Ocean in a single day. The protection division stated in a publish on X that US forces boarded the Veronica III, conducting “a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding”.
The Pentagon stated: “The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine – hoping to slide away,. We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the space, and shut it down.”
Video posted by the Pentagon confirmed US troops boarding the tanker.
The Veronica III is a Panamanian-flagged vessel underneath US sanctions associated to Iran, in response to the web site of the Treasury division’s Workplace of Overseas Property Management.
The Veronica III left Venezuela on 3 January, the identical day as Maduro’s seize, with practically 2m barrels of crude and gasoline oil, TankerTrackers.com posted on Sunday on X.
“Since 2023, she’s been concerned with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil,” the organisation stated.
Samir Madani, the co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, informed the Related Press in January that his organisation used satellite tv for pc imagery and surface-level pictures to doc that at the least 16 tankers left the Venezuelan coast in contravention of the quarantine.
The Trump administration has been seizing tankers as a part of its efforts to take management of Venezuela’s oil. The Pentagon didn’t say whether or not the Veronica III was formally seized and positioned underneath US management. It informed the AP in an e-mail that it had no extra info to supply past its publish.
Final week, the US navy boarded a unique tanker within the Indian Ocean, the Aquila II. The ship was being held whereas its destiny was determined by the US, in response to a defence official who spoke final week.
