{"id":177106,"date":"2025-12-11T08:05:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T13:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=177106"},"modified":"2025-12-11T08:06:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T13:06:36","slug":"177106","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=177106","title":{"rendered":"Venezuelan Tanker Seized"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Trump says US seizes massive Venezuelan oil tanker as showdown with Maduro erupts into new phase<\/h3>\n

The move is likely to further strain relations with Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s government<\/em>
\nBy Morgan Phillips<\/strong><\/p>\n

The U.S. has seized a Venezuelan oil tanker, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday, marking a sharp escalation in tensions with Caracas.<\/p>\n

“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela. Large tanker, very large. Largest one ever seized action. And, other things are happening. So you’ll be seeing that later. And you’ll be talking about that later with some other people,” Trump said at the White House.<\/p>\n

“It was seized for a very good reason,” he added.<\/p>\n

The move is likely to further strain relations with Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s government, which already is subject to extensive U.S. sanctions targeting Venezuela\u2019s oil sector. It comes after U.S. military strikes have targeted alleged narcotraffickers near Venezuela at least 22 times since September, killing 87 people.<\/p>\n

The seizure was led by the Coast Guard and supported by the Navy, a U.S. official told the Associated Press.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fox News<\/a><\/p>\n

According to the Venezuelan state-owned company Petr\u00f3leos de Venezuela S.A. the tanker Skipper departed Venezuela 2 Dec. with ~2 million barrels of heavy crude. Roughly half of it belonged to the Cuban state-run oil firm Cubametales, planning to sell it to Asian energy brokers.<\/p>\n

The seized supertanker is part of a sophisticated network or “shadow fleet” of ships that carry sanctioned oil. They often secure their tracking systems or otherwise disguise their locations. Such tankers have been increasingly employed by traders and shippers dealing with Venezuelan oil since Washington imposed the sanctions on the OPEC country.<\/p>\n

Skipper was previously known as the M\/T Adisa. Adisa was sanctioned by the U.S. for belonging to the tanker shadow fleet smuggling crude oil on behalf of Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard and Lebanon\u2019s Hezbollah terror groups. Now most of Venezuela\u2019s oil production now goes to China through third-party countries or on shadow tankers.<\/p>\n

The operators of more than 30 US-sanctioned oil tankers currently in Venezuela ports are alarmed, with many reconsidering whether to set sail from Venezuelan waters in the coming days as planned, shipping sources said.<\/p>\n

Turn off the drugs and oil, and Maduro has nothing left to prop up his regime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump says US seizes massive Venezuelan oil tanker as showdown with Maduro erupts into new phase … Venezuelan Tanker Seized<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":177107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reality-check","category-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=177106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/177107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=177106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=177106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=177106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}