"US military forces boarded another sanctioned tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the vessel from the Caribbean Sea in an effort to target illicit oil connected to Venezuela, the Pentagon said on Sunday. Venezuela had faced US sanctions on its oil for several years, relying on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains."
"Several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast in the wake of the raid, including the ship that was boarded in the Indian Ocean overnight. The defense department said in a post on X that US forces boarded the Veronica III, conducting a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding. The vessel tried to defy President Trump's quarantine hoping to slip away, the Pentagon said. We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down."
"The Veronica III is a Panamanian-flagged vessel under US sanctions related to Iran, according to the website of the Treasury department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. The Veronica III left Venezuela on 3 January, the same day as Maduro's capture, with nearly 2m barrels of crude and fuel oil, TankerTrackers.com posted Sunday on X. Since 2023, she's been involved with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil, the organisation said."
US military forces boarded a sanctioned tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the vessel from the Caribbean to intercept illicit oil linked to Venezuela. Venezuela faced prolonged US oil sanctions and relied on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains. President Donald Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned tankers in December to pressure then-president Nicolas Maduro prior to Maduro's apprehension in January during a US military operation. Several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast after the raid, including the Panama-flagged Veronica III, which left on 3 January with nearly 2 million barrels. Satellite imagery and surface photos documented at least 16 tankers leaving Venezuela in contravention of the quarantine.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]