U.S. military pursues sanctioned oil tanker from Caribbean to Indian Ocean before intercepting it

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U.S. military personnel seized another sanctioned tanker in the Indian Ocean on Sunday after monitoring the ship’s journey from the Caribbean as part of an operation targeting illegal Venezuelan oil, according to the Pentagon.

Venezuela has faced U.S. oil sanctions for several years, relying on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers. President Donald Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned tankers in December to apply pressure before Maduro was apprehended in January during an American military operation.

Several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast after the operation, including the vessel intercepted in the Indian Ocean. The Defense Department said in a social media post that U.S. forces conducted a “right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding” on the Veronica III.

“The vessel attempted to defy President Trump’s quarantine, hoping to escape,” the Pentagon said. “We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down.”

Footage released by the Pentagon shows U.S. troops boarding the tanker.

The Veronica III is a Panamanian-flagged vessel subject to U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control website.

The Veronica III departed Venezuela on Jan. 3, the same day Maduro was captured, carrying nearly 2 million barrels of crude and fuel oil, TankerTrackers.com posted Sunday on X.

“Since 2023, she’s been involved with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil,” the organization said.

Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, told The Associated Press in January that his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document that at least 16 tankers left the Venezuelan coast in violation of the quarantine.

The Trump administration has, as part of its broader efforts regarding Venezuela’s oil. The Pentagon did not say in the post whether the Veronica III was formally seized and placed under U.S. control, and later told the AP in an email that it had no additional information to provide beyond that post.

Last week, the Aquila II in the Indian Ocean was being held by the U.S. military while its ultimate fate was decided by the United States, according to a defense official who spoke last week on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing decision-making.