The United States has seized a second oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, enforcing a “blockade” ordered by President Donald Trump, and is currently in pursuit of third tanker.
They boarded Panamaflagged Centuries, a ship owned by a Hong Kongbased entity, on Saturday — the first non-sanctioned vessel to be targeted. Another very large crude carrier, the Skipper, was intercepted on Dec. 10. At last report, the US was pursing Bella 1 on Sunday as it was enroute to Venezuela.
Jeremy Paner, a partner at law firm Hughes Hubbard in Washington, DC, told the Reuters news agency that the U.S. has not sanctioned the vessel.
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed the interception saying the Coast Guard prehended the Bella-1 with support from the Pentagon.
The seizure marked the second time the US has gone after a tanker near Venezuela, amid a large US military build up in the area after a “total and complete blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela was ordered.
The Venezuelan government called the US’s latest actions a “serious act of international piracy”.
Vice President Delcy Rodriguez issued a statement saying the country “denounces and rejects the theft and hijacking of a new private vessel transporting oil, as well as the forced disappearance of its crew, committed by military personnel of the United States of America in international waters”.
“These acts will not go unpunished,” she promised, adding that Venezuela will take “all corresponding actions, including filing a complaint before the United Nations Security Council, other multilateral organizations, and the governments of the world”.
Reuters, citing internal documents from the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, said Centuries was carrying some 1.8 million barrels of Venezuelan Merey crude oil bound for China. While many vessels picking up oil in Venezuela are under sanctions, others transporting the country’s oil and crude from Iran and Russia have not been sanctioned. Some companies, particularly the U.S.’s Chevron, transport Venezuelan oil in their own authorized ships. Tr u m p ’ s pressure campaign on Venezuela has also included a ramped-up military presence in the region and more than two dozen military strikes on alleged drug trafficking vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near Venezuela, which have killed more than 100 people.
The strikes are widely considered illegal under both US and international law and have been described as extrajudicial killings by legal scholars and rights groups.
According to reports, Trump cited disputed U.S. oil investments in Venezuela which could be some motivation for targeting Venezuela.
“We’re not going to be letting anybody going through who shouldn’t be going through,” Trump told reporters. “You remember, they took all of our energy rights. They took all of our oil not that long ago. And we want it back. They took it; they illegally took it.”
U.S .Homeland Security advisor and close Trump aide Stephen Miller suggested on this past Wednesday that Venezuela’ s oil belongs to Washington and likened Venezuela’s move to nationalize its oil industry to a heist.
“American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela,” Miller wrote on social media Wednesday. “Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property.”
While U.S. and British companies were involved in early oil exploration in Venezuela, the fuel belongs to the Latin American country under the international law principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources.
Venezuela’s U.N. Ambassador Samuel Moncada called for an emergency meeting of the U.N.’s most powerful body to discuss “the ongoing U.S. aggression.” Citing Trump’s social media post, Moncada said, “this means that the U.S. government is claiming the world’s largest oil reserves as its own, in what would be one of the greatest acts of plunder in human history.”
In addition to urging the Security Council to condemn the taking of the tanker, Gil urged the U.N.’s most powerful body for a written statement stating that it hasn’t authorized actions against Venezuela “or against the international commercialization of its oil.”