US adds to Venezuelan sanctions with VLCC targets, does not rule out seizing more ships

A list of sanctions on VLCCs and their owners from the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has signalled that the recent increased US pressure on Venezuelan oil trading and the country’s dictator Nicolás Maduro will continue. 

The US Treasury said OFAC is "targeting Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate regime in Venezuela" with new sanctions against Maduro’s family as well as six international shipping companies and the VLCCs they control.

The new sanctions come a day after US forces boarded a VLCC in Venezuelan waters, with the US Attorney General’s office publishing a video of the incident. The US government issued and executed what it said was a "seizure warrant" for the tanker, which trade intelligence service Kpler said is thought to be 310,300-dwt VLCC Skipper.

Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote that the tanker had been under US sanctions for years, "due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organisations".

US President Donald Trump’s administration published a public notice in late November that it was designating current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as a terrorist based on his alleged control of the designated foreign terrorist organisation, the Cartel de los Soles. 

Drug trafficking has been used by the Trump administration as a premise in building up miliitary forces in the Caribbean region and a weeks-long campaign of aerial bombardment of small boats in the Caribbean Sea that has killed at least 87 people in what the UN has termed ’extrajudicial executions’. 

In the new round of US sanctions on Venezuela, which has been under US sanctions since 2019, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made reference to President Maduro and alleged the sanctioned vessels are providing "financial resources that fuel Maduro’s corrupt narco-terrorist regime".

“Nicolas Maduro and his criminal associates in Venezuela are flooding the United States with drugs that are poisoning the American people,” Secretary Bessent said. “Under President Trump’s leadership, Treasury is holding the regime and its circle of cronies and companies accountable for its continued crimes.” 

In addition to the sanctions, news agency Reuters has cited conversations with six sources who claimed the US government is preparing to seize more tankers that have loaded oil in Venezuela. Reports from tanker tracking websites suggest that several dozen of tankers are currently in Venezuelan waters, with more than 30 of those currently under US sanctions.

In a White House press briefing, the US declined to "broadcast" US plans but did not rule out further seizures of vessels.

"The Trump administration is executing on the President’s sanctions policies," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during an official press briefing. "We’re not going to stand by and watch sanctioned vessels sail the seas with black market oil, the proceeds of which will fuel narcoterrorism." 

In its latest round of sanctions, the US has listed the following VLCCs as blocked property and sanctioned their owners: