Another Venezuelan oil tanker has been intercepted by the US as Donald Trump steps up pressure on the country’s leader Nicolás Maduro.
The vessel was near Venezuela and heading to Asia was apprehended on Saturday.
A video shared by the US’s Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem shows a helicopter hovering over the tanker, called Centuries, and intercepting it.
Last week, Trump demanded a naval blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers leaving and entering the country, following the capture of another tanker by US forces near the same coastline on December 10.
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world.
The president previously warned that the Venezuelan president’s time as leader will soon come to an end.
Noem confirmed that the US Coast Guard, supported by the Department of Defense, intercepted the vessel, which had most recently been docked in Venezuela.
It is not known if the ship is subject to American sanctions.
Noem shared on X: ‘The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region. We will find you, and we will stop you.’
According to a US official who spoke anonymously, the event was a ‘consented boarding’ with the tanker stopping of its own accord and allowing American forces to come aboard.
The Venezuelan government said in a statement it ‘categorically denounces and rejects the theft and hijacking of another private vessel transporting Venezuelan oil’.
It also accused US military personnel of perpetrating ‘the enforced disappearance of its crew […] in international waters’.
At a gathering between South American leaders yesterday, tensions in Venezuela were the main topic of discussion.
Venezuela’s government released a statement condemning the action as ‘criminal’ and promised consequences. It said it will log a complaint with the UN.
Trump has stepped up his pressure on the country, blaming Maduro for migrants moving to the US and allowing drugs like fentanyl and cocaine to be trafficked.
Earlier this week, the US president did not rule out the possibility of the conflict escalating into a war. He was asked by NBC News on Friday whether full-scale war was on the table. He said: ‘I don’t rule it out, no.’
Al Jazeera reported that President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said at the meeting ‘the South American continent is once again haunted by the military presence of an extra-regional power’.
Whereas president of Argentina Javier Milei, an ally of Trump, said his country ‘welcomes the pressure from the United States and Donald Trump to free the Venezuelan people’.
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