US Coast Guard officials said on Sunday they were tracking an oil tanker in international waters close to Venezuela, multiple unnamed US officials have told US media, marking the second such action over the weekend – and the third within the past week.
What officials described as an “active pursuit” in the Caribbean Sea took place a day after the coast guard seized another vessel off the coast of Venezuela, as Washington ramps up its pressure campaign targeting the South American nation’s vital oil sector.
Unnamed officials told the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse that Sunday’s pursuit involved “a sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion”.
The ship was flying a false flag and under a judicial seizure order, an unnamed US official alleged.
News outlets identified the ship involved as the Bella 1, an oil tanker under US sanctions since 2024 because of alleged ties to Iran and Hezbollah.
US forces approached the vessel late on Saturday, but the ship did not submit to being boarded and continued sailing, the New York Times reported, citing unnamed officials, who described the situation as still active.
According to the specialized site TankerTrackers, the ship was en route to Venezuela but not carrying cargo.
Donald Trump had recently declared a “blockade” targeting all sanctioned oil tankers traveling into or out of Venezuela.
The US president’s campaign to increase pressure on authoritarian Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has involved a strengthened American military presence in the region, along with more than two dozen military strikes against vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near the South American country. Those attacks have resulted in at least 100 deaths.
Kevin Hassett, the White House national economic council director, said on Sunday on CBS News’s Face the Nation that the first two tankers taken into custody had been operating illegally and supplying oil to countries under sanctions.
“And so I don’t think that people need to be worried here in the US that the prices are going to go up because of these seizures of these ships,” Hassett said. “There’s just a couple of them – and they were black market ships.”
But as the seizures increase geopolitical tensions, they are likely to drive oil prices higher when Asian markets reopen on Monday, an oil trader told Reuters. The trader added that expectations surrounding a potential end to the war in Ukraine could help limit further price increases.
US forces on Saturday apprehended a second merchant vessel carrying oil off the coast of Venezuela in international waters in the midst of an American blockade against the country’s oil, according to the Trump administration’s homeland security department.
That stoppage followed the seizure by US forces of another oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast on 10 December. Both vessels were headed to Asia.
When asked if he would support a US-backed regime change in Venezuela, James Lankford, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, said on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union: “Well, yes, I do.” Lankford said Maduro “is not the recognized leader of Venezuela” as far as the senator is concerned, which appeared in part to be an allusion to Maduro’s evident defeat in the 2024 presidential election to former diplomat Edmundo González.
The developments come as Trump and his advisers have refused to rule out the potential for open conflict with Venezuela as Maduro has urged his navy to escort oil tankers, defying the largest US fleet deployed in the region in decades.
After the first oil tanker was seized, the Venezuelan government said in a statement that the US had committed “blatant theft” and described the action as “an act of international piracy”.
In an interview broadcast on Friday morning, Trump told NBC News that going to war with Maduro’s regime remains on the table. “I don’t rule it out, no,” he told the network in a phone interview.
Reuters contributed reporting
