Washington – In the USA there is hijacked a large oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, officials said Wednesday, an escalation tension between the two countries. President Trump said he believes the US will keep oil.
This was first reported by Bloomberg. hijacking an oil tanker. Trump announced the seizure during a White House roundtable, saying the tanker was seized “for a very good reason.”
“As you probably know, we just seized a tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a big tanker, a very big one,” he said. “This is actually the largest seizure ever. And other things happen, so you'll see it later and talk about it later with other people.”
Asked by a reporter what would happen to the oil on the ship, Mr. Trump replied, “Well, I guess we'll keep it,” adding, “I guess we'll keep the oil.”
The president did not provide details.
The name of the tanker is The Skipper, according to three sources familiar with the situation. The operation to capture him began around 6 a.m. Wednesday and included two helicopters, 10 Coast Guard personnel, 10 Marines and special operations forces, according to a senior military official and a source familiar with the operation. According to them, “Skipper” had just left the port in Venezuela when he was detained.
Helicopters used to hijack a tanker that took off from USS Gerald Ford The boarding party consisted of the Coast Guard's Maritime Security and Response Team, an elite maritime interdiction unit based on the East Coast in Chesapeake, Virginia, according to a senior military official and a source familiar with the operation.
USS Gerald Ford, the most modern aircraft carrier in the US fleet, arrived in the Caribbean last month amid a larger military buildup in the region.
In 2022, Skipper was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department for alleged ties to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah. At that time it was sailing under the name Adisa. The 20-year-old tanker previously sailed as The Toyo in 2005, according to publicly available maritime records.
Attorney General Pam Bondi shared video of the seizure on social media, writing that the tanker was “used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran” and was seized by the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Coast Guard “with the support of the Department of War.”
“For several years, the oil tanker was subject to U.S. sanctions due to its participation in an illicit oil distribution network supporting foreign terrorist organizations,” Bondi wrote.
The operation was led by the US Coast Guard with support from the Navy, US officials said. Any such operation would legally require the Coast Guard to be the lead agency since the authorities used for these seizures fall under the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard.
Although the US government, particularly the Department of Justice and Homeland Security Investigations, have seized sanctioned oil tankers, helicopter boardings at sea are rare, although boarding teams are trained to do so.
The Trump administration is considering additional missions similar to Wednesday's hijacking, according to a senior military official and a source familiar with the operation.
Mr Trump had threatened to expand the US's months-long campaign to strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific oceans to the land of Venezuela. The US has been steadily building up its military forces in the area and just this week sent two fighter jets to fly over the Gulf of Venezuela.
'We're going to start doing these strikes on land, too,' Mr Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting last week when asked about the administration's naval strikes. “You know, the earth is much simpler… And we know the routes they take. We know everything about them. We know where they live. We know where the bad ones live. And we're going to start that very soon too.”
