December 17, 2025 - By itself, the U.S. seizure of a Venezuelan oil cargo won’t rattle oil markets. But it likely signals a new commitment to sanctions enforcement that will complicate “shadow fleet” operations and ratchet up the pressure on Maduro to step aside.

December 11, 2025 - Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Venezuela. The seizure is the first of a Venezuelan oil cargo amid U.S. sanctions that have been in force since 2019. It is also the Trump administration's first known action against a Venezuela-related tanker since he ordered a massive military buildup in the region.

December 11, 2025 - "For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations," the nation's top prosecutor wrote on X.

1 week ago - The seizure of ships is part of what Trump has termed a “blockade” of sanctioned vessels, a strategy that began before the US military operation that extracted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from Caracas and brought him to New York where ...

December 12, 2025 - The ship departed Venezuela last ... Press. Venezuela’s government has said the seizure “constitutes a blatant theft and an act of international piracy”....

2 weeks ago - The seizure of the vessel marks a new flashpoint in Washington’s confrontation with Moscow over Venezuela’s sanctioned oil trade. The U.S. had been pursuing the vessel since December, when the Coast Guard attempted to board it off the Venezuelan coast. Tracking data showed that the tanker was not carrying any oil when U.S.

3 days ago - According to Reuters, citing shipping documents from state company PDVSA and monitoring service tankertrackers.com, it departed empty from Venezuelan waters in early January, but had not returned to Venezuela as other ships have in recent days. It is the sixth known boarding and seizure by the US military of a foreign-flagged oil tanker in support of Trump’s clamping down on the Venezuelan oil industry since the capture of Maduro and his subsequent removal to the US earlier this month, an operation including air strikes on Caracas that Venezuelan officials say killed more than 100 military personnel and civilians.

4 days ago - The vessel had not returned to Venezuela as other ships have done in recent days. The seizures began as part of Trump's campaign to force Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro out of power, which culminated in U.S.

2 days ago - Maduro said in October 2025 that the US wanted to seize Venezuela's oil and that the Bolivarian Army of Venezuela had been mobilized to repel a land invasion. The Russian tanker Seahorse, sanctioned by the European Union and the UK, attempting ...

December 11, 2025 - She said the tanker had been sanctioned by the US for “multiple years” due to its “involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations”. The seizure is the first of a Venezuelan oil cargo amid US ...

1 week ago - It comes as over a dozen of sanctioned oil tankers fled Venezuela in 'dark mode' in an effort to evade Donald Trump's blockade of the country. The 16 vessels, mostly loaded with Venezuelan crude oil and fuel, departed the country's waters over ...

1 week ago - One ship was seized Friday in the Caribbean, and others were spotted steaming hundreds of miles into the Atlantic. ... Nine tankers sail east from Venezuela, captured by satellite imagery in early January. (European Union, contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2026, processed with Copernicus Browser) ... At least 11 oil tankers under U.S. sanctions were spotted this week well beyond Venezuelan waters, according to satellite-imagery analysis, having fled the maritime blockade that President Donald Trump imposed as part of the administration’s pressure campaign against the government there.