We are apparently planing on going after more tankers.
Earlier story from the WSJ
The move came just hours after Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado left the country on a boat, an escape that potentially gave the Trump administration an opening to take more aggressive action against the Maduro regime.
“As you probably know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela—a large tanker, very large. The largest one ever seized, actually,” Trump said during an event at the White House on Wednesday afternoon.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Coast Guard executed a seizure warrant for the tanker with support from the Defense Department. In a video she posted on social media, uniformed men can be seen fast-roping onto the ship from helicopters and entering the bridge with guns raised.
“For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations,” Bondi wrote on social media. The vessel had been used to transport “sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran,” she said.
A Pentagon official said the move was a warning to other tankers waiting to dock and load up Venezuelan crude.
Maritime tracking data shows around a dozen off the Venezuelan coast, but the official said others have their Automatic Identification System turned off to avoid detection.
The U.S. has sanctions in place that prohibit companies from trading Venezuelan oil, though it has given exemptions to some companies, including Chevron, which this summer received a narrowed license to operate in the country. Trump has warned that he will level hefty tariffs on countries that buy oil from Caracas.
Asked about the seizure at the White House, Trump joked that journalists should follow the tanker with a helicopter and said he assumed the U.S. would keep the oil. He also said that information about the ship’s owner would be forthcoming.
Brokers in Singapore told The Wall Street Journal that a tanker called the Skipper was the vessel seized off Venezuela. The tanker, formerly called the Adisa, had been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for carrying Iranian crude