The tanker left Venezuela in January, and was reportedly headed for China with around 700,000 barrels of crude oil. It “acted in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine for sanctioned ships in the Caribbean. It proceeded and we followed,” the Defense Headquarters wrote on X.
The tanker is the eighth ship the US has seized since December, when President Trump ordered a blockade of all ships carrying oil to and from Venezuela. It is also the second ship to be pursued and seized outside the Caribbean, after the oil tanker Marinera was boarded in the North Atlantic in January.
