White House says it will seize the oil from Venezuelan tanker

The Trump administration will seize the oil aboard a tanker that U.S. troops captured this week near Venezuela, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday.

“The vessel will go to a U.S. port and the United States does intend to seize the oil,” Ms. Leavitt said during a White House press briefing. “However, there is a legal process for the seizure of that oil, and that legal process will be followed.”

The U.S. has long targeted the ship as a rogue vessel and said it was violating international sanctions on Iranian oil.

Ms. Leavitt said the ship, a so-called sanctioned shadow vessel, was tied to black market activity with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in violation of U.S. sanctions. It was allegedly transporting Iranian and Venezuelan oil to Cuba.

She said the vessel is currently undergoing a forfeiture process that includes interviewing those aboard and documenting evidence.

The seizure of the oil tanker turned up the pressure that President Trump is putting on Venezuela’s socialist dictator, Nicolas Maduro.

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SEE ALSO: Venezuela cries ‘piracy’ after U.S. seizes sanctioned ship carrying bootleg oil to Iran

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Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil called the seizure of the ship a “blatant theft and an act of international piracy.”

He accused the U.S. of trying to plunder Venezuelan oil under the guise of cracking down on drug trafficking.

“The true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed,” Mr. Gil said. “It’s not migration. It’s not drug trafficking. It’s not democracy. It has always been our natural resources.”

In Moscow, Mr. Maduro’s most important global ally, Vladimir Putin, expressed solidarity with Venezuela and its embattled leader.

The Kremlin said in a statement that the Russian president spoke with Mr. Maduro by phone and reaffirmed his support for Venezuelan leader’s policy of “protecting national interests and sovereignty in the face of growing external pressure.”

The seized tanker has been the target of sanctions since 2022 and was currently operating under the name Skipper. A federal judge issued a seizure warrant for the vessel roughly two weeks ago because of the ship’s history of smuggling illicit Iranian oil.

Iran uses oil sales to fund its armed forces, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist entity, according to federal prosecutors.

Skipper was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022 when it sailed as the Panamanian-flagged Adisa. At the time of the sanctions, the vessel was owned by Triton Navigation in the Marshall Islands.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Triton in 2022 along with Viktor Sergiyovitch Artemov, a Swiss-based Ukrainian citizen. OFAC said it was sanctioning Mr. Artemov because he led a network of ships and shell companies used to export Iranian oil to fund the IRGC and Hezbollah.

The U.S. Coast Guard, FBI and Homeland Security Investigations executed a seizure warrant for the crude oil tanker used to transport oil from Venezuela and Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions on both nations, said Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Ms. Bondi wrote on X that the seizure of the tanker was “due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.” She shared a video of U.S. forces jumping out of helicopters on the vessel and searching it.

The seizure will make it significantly more difficult for Venezuela to export its oil to other countries. Other shippers, fearing additional seizures, will be unlikely to load Venezuelan oil onto their vessels.

The South American nation has the world’s largest oil reserves, but has been crippled by U.S. sanctions that have left China and Cuba, which is also subject to U.S. sanctions, as its most lucrative markets.