US targeting Venezuelan oil, Trump imposes sanctions

(ASSOCIATED PRESS) The oil tanker was navigating near the coast of Guyana recently when its location transponder showed it starting to zigzag. It was a seemingly improbable maneuver and the latest digital clue that the ship, the Skipper, was trying to obscure its whereabouts and the valuable cargo stored inside its hull: tens of millions of dollars’ worth of illicit crude oil.

On Wednesday, U.S. commandos fast-roping from helicopters seized the 332-meter (1,090-feet) ship — not where it appeared to be navigating on ship tracking platforms but some 360 nautical miles to the northwest, near the coast of Venezuela.

The seizure marked a dramatic escalation in President Donald Trump’s campaign to pressure strongman Nicolás Maduro by cutting off access to oil revenues that have long been the lifeblood of Venezuela’s economy. It could also signal a broader U.S. campaign to clamp down on ships like the Skipper, which experts and U.S. officials say is part of a shadowy fleet of rusting oil tankers that smuggle oil for countries facing stiff sanctions, such as Venezuela, Russia and Iran.

“There are hundreds of flagless, stateless tankers that have been a lifeline for revenues, sanctioned oil revenues, for regimes like Maduro’s, Iran and for the Kremlin,” said Michelle Wiese Bockmann, a senior analyst at Windward, a maritime intelligence firm that tracks such vessels. “They can no longer operate unchallenged.”

Since the first Trump administration imposed punishing oil sanctions on Venezuela in 2017, Maduro’s government has relied on scores of such oil tankers to smuggle their crude into global supply chains.

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