'
US Coast Guard ‘pursues’ another oil tanker near Venezuela
International

US Coast Guard ‘pursues’ another oil tanker near Venezuela

author
3 minutes, 18 seconds Read

The U.S. Coast Guard is pursuing an oil tanker in international waters near Venezuela, officials said Sunday, in what would be the second such operation in two days and the third in less than two weeks if successful.
“The United States Coast Guard is actively pursuing a sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion,” a US official said. “It is flying a false flag and is under court seizure order.”
Another official told Reuters news agency that the tanker was under sanctions, but added that no boarding had taken place so far and that interceptions could take various forms – including sailing or flying close to ships of concern.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not provide a specific location for the operation or name the ship being pursued. British maritime risk management group Vanguard, along with a US maritime security source, identified the ship as Bella 1, a crude oil carrier on the US Treasury sanctions list.

Bella 1 was empty as it approached Venezuela local time on Sunday, according to TankerTrackers.com, an online service that monitors oil shipments and storage.

The ship had provided the transport of Venezuelan oil to China in 2021, according to internal documents of state-owned company PDVSA. According to the ship monitoring service, the ship had also previously carried Iranian crude oil.

Second oil tanker seized by the US on Saturday

The US “detained” an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on Saturday, a move Caracas deemed “theft and kidnapping”, in the latest salvo of a pressure campaign by Washington.
It was the second time in two weeks that US forces have banned a tanker in the region, coming days after President Donald Trump announced a blockade of “sanctioned oil ships” entering and leaving Venezuela.
“In a pre-dawn action on December 20, the U.S. Coast Guard, with support from the War Department, apprehended an oil tanker last docked in Venezuela,” U.S. Homeland Security Chief Kristi Noem said in a post on X.

The post was accompanied by a nearly eight-minute aerial video showing a helicopter hovering just above the deck of a large tanker at sea.

Caracas labeled the seizure as theft and kidnapping and said “those responsible for these serious events will answer to justice and history for their criminal behavior.”
A Department of Homeland Security post identified the ship as the Centuries and said it was “suspected of carrying oil subject to U.S. sanctions.”
According to TankerTrackers, Centuries is a Panamanian-flagged, Chinese-owned oil tanker.

An investigation by Agence France-Presse found that Centuries is not on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of sanctioned companies and individuals.

Could tanker seizures affect oil prices?

The first two seized oil tankers were operating on the black market, supplying oil to countries under sanctions, Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, claimed in a television interview on Sunday.
“And so I don’t think people here in the US should worry about prices going up because of these seizures of these ships,” Hassett told US broadcaster CBS.

“There are only a few of them, and they were black market ships.”

But an oil trader told Reuters the seizures could push oil prices slightly higher when Asian trading resumes on Monday.
“We could see prices rise modestly at the open as market participants could see this as an escalation that puts more Venezuelan barrels at risk” because the tanker intercepted on Saturday was not under US sanctions, UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo said.
Another analyst said the seizures pose geopolitical risks and are likely to increase friction in the shadow fleet of ships carrying oil from sanctioned countries such as Venezuela, Russia and Iran.
The seizures could legitimize and encourage Ukraine to continue targeting Russian ships and possibly encourage Europe to also detain Moscow-linked dark fleet vessels, said Matias Togni, oil shipping analyst at NextBarrel.

#Coast #Guard #pursues #oil #tanker #Venezuela

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *