Video: US forces seize oil tanker off Venezuela

The US has seized an unnamed oil tanker that it claims violated US sanctions. 

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.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi posted a video of the operation to commandeer the vessel on her X profile, which can be seen at the bottom of this article. The footage shows a military helicopter and soldiers dressed in fatigues and carrying weapons dropping onto the vessel’s deck from the helicopter by rope.

Attorney General Bondi claimed in the post 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. 

"Based in Venezuela, the Cartel de los Soles is headed by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature and judiciary. Neither Maduro nor his cronies represent Venezuela’s legitimate government," a statement from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. The statement went on to claim that the Cartel de los Soles and others "are responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe."

Drug trafficking has been used by the Trump administration as a premise in 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’. 

"The United States will continue using all available tools to protect our national security interests and deny funding and resources to narco-terrorists," Mr Rubio’s statement said.

The seizure of the tanker follows the targeted airstrikes on small watercraft off the Venezuelan and Colombian coasts, and US Attorney General Bondi said the operation was authorised by four federal government agencies.

"The seizure, completed off the coast of Venezuela, was conducted safely and securely, and our investigation alongside the Department of Homeland Security continues," Ms Bondi’s statement said.

Intelligence firm Kpler said in a post on its LinkedIn social media page that the operation to seize the tanker followed "satellite evidence that it covertly loaded 1.1M barrels of sanctioned Merey crude from Venezuela’s Jose terminal".

"Despite transmitting falsified AIS positions to conceal its location, satellite imagery seen by Kpler confirmed the vessel’s operations. The seizure underscores Washington’s escalating efforts to crack down on dark-fleet activity tied to Iranian and Venezuelan crude trades," the Kpler post said, noting suspected spoofing and other "sanctions evasions tactics" by the vessel. Kpler also said Venezuela’s crude exports had dropped to 700,000 barrels per day, a small amount for a country that contains the largest-known proven oil reserves in the world, at 300Bn barrels.

The government of Venezuelan President Maduro, who is widely believed to have maintained power in Venezuela through election fraud, called the tanker seizure a "blatant theft and an act of international piracy" and claimed "the true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed ... it has always been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy".

In addition to the apparent falsification, or spoofing, of its AIS location, the VLCC is also listed in Equasis’ vessel database as falsely flying the flag of Guyana.