U.S. Coast Guard Boards Tanker Carrying Venezuelan Oil
The U.S. Coast Guard intercepted and boarded a tanker flagged by Panama that was transporting Venezuelan oil early Saturday, as reported by a U.S. official and two individuals from Venezuela’s oil sector. All three requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the issue. This boarding marks the second action taken by the United States this month against a vessel carrying Venezuelan crude oil destined for Asia, amplifying President Trump’s pressure campaign on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Maduro of inundating the U.S. with fentanyl and of misappropriating oil from American firms without presenting any evidence.On Tuesday, Mr. Trump declared “a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and exiting Venezuela.”However, the tanker boarded on Saturday, identified as the Centuries, is not listed among the entities under U.S. sanctions that the Treasury Department publicly maintains. Sources within Venezuela’s oil industry stated that the cargo belongs to a well-established oil trader based in China known for transporting Venezuelan crude to Chinese refineries.The ship had recently departed from Venezuela and was navigating Caribbean waters.Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, stated in a post on X Saturday afternoon that the Coast Guard had “apprehended” a tanker that had previously docked in Venezuela.“The United States will persist in combating the illicit transport of sanctioned oil, which supports narco terrorism in the area,” she commented. “We will locate you, and we will halt you.”Ms. Noem also shared a video that seemed to depict U.S. forces descending from a helicopter onto the deck of the ship.It remained uncertain how long the United States planned to retain the Centuries. The U.S. official who validated the ship’s boarding indicated that American authorities lacked a seizure warrant to take control of it, as they did during the earlier seizure of another tanker this month carrying Venezuelan oil.The White House did not reply to requests for comments.The Venezuelan government issued a statement denouncing and unequivocally rejecting the seizure and hijacking of yet another private vessel transporting Venezuelan oil, along with the forced disappearance of its crew. The Centuries had loaded between 1.8 million and two million barrels of Merey-16 crude oil at the José Terminal in Venezuela between December 7 and December 11, as indicated by data analyzed by TankerTrackers.com and Kpler, two companies that track global shipping. This voyage marked the vessel’s seventh export of Venezuelan oil since 2020.With escalating tensions between the United States and Venezuela, Mr. Maduro recently commanded his navy to escort oil tankers departing Venezuelan ports. Satellite imagery reviewed by The New York Times indicated the Centuries on Thursday heading east, escorted by three vessels believed to belong to the Venezuelan Navy. This flotilla seemed to accompany the supertanker, along with two other merchant vessels, to the edge of Venezuela’s exclusive economic zone and was not observed during the boarding on Saturday.International law permits a ship to be boarded if there are reasonable grounds to suspect that it is not legitimately registered to the country whose flag it bears. The U.S. official stated that the Coast Guard was assessing whether the Centuries’s Panama registration was legitimate.On December 10, armed U.S. agents boarded and seized a tanker named the Skipper, which was carrying Venezuelan oil, flying a false flag and was under U.S. sanctions for previously transporting Iranian crude. In that instance, American officials had secured a seizure warrant for the Skipper from a federal magistrate judge, based on the vessel’s connections to Iran, which the United States accuses of selling oil to fund terrorism.Centuries has no notable ties to Iran and is not documented as having transported Iranian oil, according to sources within Venezuela’s oil sector and records from TankerTrackers.com and Kpler. Its last six voyages involved the transportation of Venezuelan crude and fuel oil, which it frequently transferred to other vessels at sea. Those secondary vessels subsequently delivered the cargo to China, which imports a significant amount of Venezuela’s oil.The tanker — like many others categorized by law enforcement as part of the ghost fleet — has also practiced deceptive shipping strategies to sustain this trade.On its most recent journey to Venezuela, for example, the Centuries transmitted a false location hundreds of miles away, pretending to be in transit when it was, in fact, loading oil at the port, as revealed by a Times examination of ship-tracking data and satellite imagery. This practice of faking location data by vessels is referred to as spoofing. Reporting was contributed by Edward Wong, John Ismay, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, and Simon Romero.
Published: 2025-12-21 01:34:00
source: www.nytimes.com
