US military has boarded another oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea. In a social media post, the Pentagon said today that the ship, Veronica III, is linked to illegal oil shipments connected to Venezuela. 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.
US President Donald Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned tankers in December to pressure then-President Nicolás Maduro before Maduro was apprehended in January during an American military operation. Several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast in the wake of the raid, including the ship that was boarded in the Indian Ocean overnight.
The Trump administration has been seizing tankers as part of its broader efforts to take control of Venezuela’s oil. The Pentagon did not say in the post whether the Veronica III was formally seized and placed under US control.
