The United States has taken control of another oil tanker for defying ruler Donald Trump’s “quarantine.” The Pentagon said that “the vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine – hoping to slip away. We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down.”
The US launched a military operation in Venezuela in early January. That operation saw the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. In addition to that, the US now claims to have seized control of the country’s oil exports. Earlier this year, Trump said that Washington plans to “control Venezuela’s oil resources indefinitely.”
Even before that operation, Trump ordered what he described as a “total and complete blockade” on all US‑sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela in December, according to a report by RT.
Russia has publicly and repeatedly condemned the US’s actions against Caracas. Russian officials said that Washington’s policies violate international norms. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that the US is seeking to control all international energy supply routes to attain global economic dominance.
This is not the first tanker that the US has taken, either, and the chances of it being the last are incredibly small. Now that the US believes it owns whatever oil it wants, it’ll justify military force to steal resources under the guise of “defying sanctions.”
In a statement on X, the US War Department said the vessel, named Veronica III, was tracked from the Caribbean Sea into the Indian Ocean before being stopped and inspected in what it described as a “right‑of‑visit, maritime interdiction and boarding.”
Reuters also reported last week, citing trade sources, that India’s two state-owned refiners had purchased 2 million barrels of Venezuelan crude for delivery in the second half of April. The agency also said that, according to shipping schedules, 2 million barrels of Venezuelan crude were sent to refineries operated by Spanish oil company Repsol. -RT
The US is also allegedly pushing Venezuela’s oil toward new buyers, and away from China and India. Israel received its first crude oil shipment from the South American nation, according to Bloomberg.