The United States seized an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast that was used to ship sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran, FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Wednesday.
“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela—large tanker, very large, largest one ever, actually, and other things are happening,” U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters.
Trump has been pressuring Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to leave office and has threatened military action on Venezuelan soil and increasing strikes at sea.
Patel and Bondi stated that a seizure warrant was carried out on the unnamed tanker.
Vanguard, a British maritime risk management group, said the seized tanker, reportedly carrying 1.1 million barrels of heavy crude, is thought to be one that Washington already sanctioned for involvement in Iranian oil trading before the owners changed the vessel’s name.
Venezuela, which primarily sells oil to China, has been offloading it at a steep discount as it competes with Moscow and Tehran on the black market.
The FBI, U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Coast Guard, backed with U.S. military support, carried out the operation, shown in part in a brief video that Patel and Bondi posted on social media.
While the United States has carried out several military strikes on boats suspected of transporting drugs, Wednesday’s operation was the first known action taken on an oil tanker since the U.S. military began focusing on the region in recent weeks.
The Venezuelan government called the action “an act of international piracy.”
Asked what the United States would do with the oil, Trump told reporters, “We keep it, I guess.”
