WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is pursuing another oil tanker in international waters near Venezuela, a US official told Al Jazeera, as Washington intensifies a pressure campaign against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The operation on Sunday comes a day after the US coastguard seized its second vessel off the coast of Venezuela in two weeks, as part of a “blockade” ordered by US President Donald Trump.
The US official told Al Jazeera that the US coastguard “remains in active pursuit” of the vessel, which they described as being part of Venezuela’s dark fleet trying to evade Washington’s sanctions on the Latin American country’s vital oil sector.
The official added that the vessel was “flying a false flag” and was “under a judicial seizure order”.
The Reuters news agency, citing a US official, reported that the tanker was under sanctions, but added that it had not been boarded so far. The official told the agency that interceptions can take different forms, including sailing or flying close to vessels of concern.
The official did not give a specific location for the operation or name the vessel being pursued.
The British maritime risk management group Vanguard identified the vessel as Bella 1, a very large crude oil carrier that was added last year to the sanctions list of the US Treasury Department, which said the vessel has links to Iran.
Bella 1 was empty when it was approaching Venezuela on Sunday, according to TankerTrackers.com.
Reuters, citing internal documents from Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, reported that the vessel had, in 2021, provided transportation for Venezuela’s oil to China. The agency, citing a vessel monitoring service, also reported that the vessel had previously carried Iranian crude.
‘INTERNATIONAL PIRACY’
The campaign targeting Venezuela’s oil sector comes amid a large US military buildup in the region with a stated mission of combating drug trafficking, as well as more than two dozen strikes on alleged drug trafficking vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near the South American nation.
Critics have questioned the legality of the attacks, which have killed more than 100 people.
Venezuela denies any involvement in drug trafficking and insists that Washington is seeking to overthrow Maduro to seize the country’s oil reserves, which are the world’s largest.
It has condemned the US’s vessel seizures as acts of “international piracy”.
The White House said on Sunday that the first two oil tankers seized by the US were operating on the black market and were providing oil to countries under sanctions.
“And so, I don’t think that people need to be worried here in the US that the prices are going to go up because of these seizures of these ships,” Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council said on CBS’s Face the Nation programme.
“There’s just a couple of them, and they were black market ships.”
The second ship, which was seized on Saturday and identified as the Panama-flagged Centuries, was carrying some 1.8 million barrels of Venezuelan Merey crude oil bound for China.
Al Jazeera Heidi Zhou-Castro, reporting from Washington, DC, noted that Trump’s “total and complete blockade” applied to sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, and said the US has not sanctioned the Centuries.
“The US also did not have a warrant for that ship, though a White House spokeswoman said the oil it was carrying is sanctioned because it comes from the Venezuelan state-owned oil company,” said Zhou-Castro.
“As for the first ship that was seized, the Skipper, it is now docked off the shore of Texas, where its cargo of 1.9 million barrels of crude is being offloaded to be refined in the US. Now, this feeds into those accusations from the Venezuelan government that the US is stealing its oil.”
‘PRELUDE TO WAR’
The US operation has prompted criticism even within Trump’s Republican Party.
Senator Rand Paul told ABC’s This Week that the moves were a “provocation and a prelude to war”.
“And I hope we don’t go to war with Venezuela. Look, at any point in time, there are 20, 30, governments around the world that we don’t like that are either socialist or communist or have human rights violations. We could really, literally, go through a couple dozen, but it isn’t the job of the American soldier to be the policeman of the world,” he said.
“So, I’m not for confiscating these liners. I’m not for blowing up these boats of unarmed people that are suspected of being drug dealers,” he added.
Analysts expressed concern over the rising tensions and the potential for rights violations in the US.
“The US is not under real threat from Venezuela in any way, not even from drug trafficking. But a lot of people in the White House think that it will be convenient for the US to declare war,” said Ernesto Castaneda, an expert on Latin American affairs at the American University in Washington, DC.
Such a move would allow the US to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, paving the way for mass deportations and even quell opposition from US citizens, he said.
The White House also believes that if the US were to go to war, there would be less attention to the ongoing furore over the government’s partial release of the files late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as well as the state of the economy.
“But I think those calculations are wrong,” he said.
Castaneda also noted that the US and Venezuela continue to trade, despite the tensions.
“Venezuelan economy depends to a large degree on the export of oil, most of it going to China. And these [seized] oil tankers, even though they indeed carry a lot of oil, there’s a lot of trade that is happening,” he said.
“And, funnily enough, the trade with the US, though the agreement with the [US oil company] Chevron continues. So, even though we have the third oil tanker that has been stopped, most of the tankers are regulated with permission to go into the US, and they continue to do so.”