U.S. Seizes Sanctioned Oil Tanker Off Venezuela, Escalating Tensions

The United States seized a large oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced, escalating a standoff that already includes a military buildup in the Caribbean and a campaign of strikes on alleged drug boats, according to CBS News and NBC News.

“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large,” Trump said at a White House roundtable. “Largest one ever seized, actually.” Asked what would happen to the oil, he said, “Well we keep it, I guess,” CBS reported; NBC quoted him adding, “I don’t know.”

The ship is the Skipper, a 20-year-old tanker that the Treasury Department sanctioned in 2022, when it sailed as the Adisa, for alleged ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah, CBS reported; NBC said Treasury had linked it to the Adisa, named in a 2022 sanctions notice. According to CBS, citing a senior military official and another source, the operation began about 6 a.m. Wednesday as the tanker had just left a Venezuelan port, and involved two helicopters launched from the USS Gerald Ford, 10 Coast Guard members, 10 Marines and special operations forces. The boarding team came from the Coast Guard’s Maritime Security and Response Team. Video shared by Attorney General Pam Bondi showed people rappelling from helicopters onto the deck.

Bondi wrote on X that the government had executed a seizure warrant on a tanker “used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran,” part of “an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.” On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the Coast Guard-led operation, carried out in coordination with the Defense and Justice departments and the FBI, “a successful operation directed by the president,” NBC reported. A senior White House official told NBC that no other seizure warrants for tankers have currently been approved by judges.

CBS reported that Venezuela’s government called the seizure “a shameless robbery and an act of international piracy.” Foreign Minister Yván Gil said on social media, “It is not migration. It is not drug trafficking. It is not democracy. It is not human rights. It has always been about our natural wealth, our oil.” NBC reported that he called the move an attempt to distract from the “political spectacle staged today in Oslo,” where opposition leader María Corina Machado’s daughter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf.

The operation fits a broader pattern. The USS Gerald Ford arrived in the Caribbean last month, CBS reported. CBS noted that such an operation would legally require the Coast Guard to lead, which is why the service led it with Navy support.

Asked what would happen to the oil, Trump gave no firm answer.