It is the second time in recent weeks that the United States has seized a tanker near Venezuela and comes amid a major U.S. military buildup in the region.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to say where the operation was taking place, but added that it was being led by the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard and Defense Department referred questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Venezuela’s oil ministry and state oil company PDVSA did not respond to requests for comment.
“I am ordering a complete and total blockade of all licensed oil tankers in and out of Venezuela,” President Trump said Tuesday. A de facto embargo has been in place since the U.S. military seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela last week, with the ship carrying millions of barrels of oil remaining in Venezuelan waters without risk of seizure.
Since the first seizure, Venezuela’s crude oil exports have declined significantly.
While many vessels taking oil from Venezuela are subject to sanctions, vessels transporting the country’s oil and crude oil from Iran and Russia are not, and some companies, most notably the US company Chevron, transport Venezuelan oil on their own licensed vessels.
China is the biggest buyer of Venezuela’s crude oil imports, accounting for about 4%, with shipments expected to average more than 600,000 barrels a day in December, analysts said.
For now, the oil market is well-supplied, with millions of barrels of oil waiting to be unloaded on tankers off the coast of China. If the embargo continues for some time, it is likely that nearly 1 million barrels of oil supply per day will be lost and oil prices will rise.
Since the U.S. imposed energy sanctions on Venezuela in 2019, traders and refiners who buy Venezuelan oil have relied on “shadow fleets” of tankers with disguised locations and sanctioned vessels to transport oil from Iran and Russia.
The shadow or shadow fleets are believed to be at risk of possible punitive action from the United States, shipping analysts said.
As of this week, about 38 of the more than 70 oil tankers that are part of the shadow fleet in Venezuelan waters are under U.S. Treasury sanctions, according to data from TankerTrackers.com. At least 15 of them are said to be carrying crude oil and fuel.
Trump’s pressure campaign against Maduro has included an increased military presence in the region and more than two dozen military attacks on ships in the Pacific and Caribbean near Venezuela, killing at least 100 people.
President Trump also said that a US ground attack on the South American country would begin soon.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has claimed that the US military buildup is aimed at overthrowing him and seizing control of the OPEC member country’s oil resources, which have the world’s largest oil reserves.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart and Marianna Parraga; Editing by Alison Williams, Sergio Non and Franklin Paul)
