Santiago, Chile – President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered U.S. naval ships in the Caribbean to block the entry and exit of sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers. Eighteen tankers are now being monitored, and he is considering seizing them, according to U.S. reports.
On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Venezuelan Navy has received orders to begin escorting oil tankers, heightening tensions in the Caribbean. The newspaper reported that the navy had already escorted a few tankers on their way to Asia, but that the ships were not on the U.S. sanctions list.
The White House said on social media on Tuesday: “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America.”
Trump said that the blockade would only continue to grow, and the impact on Venezuela will be like nothing they have ever seen before, “Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
Trump also again accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of using oil resources to finance terrorism, drug trafficking, and other crimes. In November, the U.S. administration added The Cartel of Suns (Cartel de los Soles), a loose group of alleged drug traffickers within Venezuela’s military, as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) – claiming that Maduro was the head of the organization.
The Republican president has not yet explicitly stated that the actions off the Venezuelan coast are aimed at seizing oil. However, according to statements made by a Trump advisor to Axios, “We have to wait for them [the oil tankers] to move.”
The advisor added, “Once they move, we’ll go to court, get a warrant and then get them,” suggesting that the government’s strategy aims to disrupt Venezuela’s economic lifeline to destabilize the Maduro regime and pressure him to leave power.
Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff, said that Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle.” The U.S. has now killed over 100 people it alleges were transporting drugs in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean.
Maduro, in recent statements, asserted that “what they want is to colonize Venezuela to seize our oil wealth” and maintained that the U.S. is falsely accusing the Venezuelan government of links to drug trafficking in order to create a lucrative pretext, similar, in his view, to what happened in Afghanistan and Libya.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that the blockade will not only cause economic consequences within Venezuela, but could also generate an increase in the international price of oil, by reducing the Venezuelan supply in the global market.
Featured image: U.S. military seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on December 10.
Image credit: Attorney General Pam Bondi via X.
