Feb. 15 (UPI) — The U.S. military intercepted an oil tanker overnight that was linked to Venezuela after tracking it from the Caribbean into the Indian Ocean.
The tanker, the Veronica III, was boarded without incident late Saturday night in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility after it attempted to outrun the Trump administration’s naval blockade in the Caribbean, the Department of Defense announced early Sunday.
The United States has now intercepted or seized nine oil tankers associated with Venezuela since Dec. 10 when the administration started enforcing a blockade on oil tankers leaving the South American nation to pressure it’s president, Nicolas Maduro, to leave power.
After the U.S. military captured Maduro in a clandestine early morning mission in January, several tankers scattered from the country, according to reports.
“The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine — hoping to slip away,” the Pentagon said in a post on X. “We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance and shut it down. No other nation has the reach, endurance or will to do this.”
The Veronica III, flagged in Panama, has previously been linked with transporting sanctioned Iranian oil and working with a sanctioned Chinese ship-management company, Fox News reported.
The tanker was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for shipping Iranian oil to other markets and has since used different names and flags in order to evade capture.
At least 16 tankers docked in Venezuelan ports tried to escape the U.S. naval blockade in the days after Maduro’s capture, the New York Times reported, with at least 12 of them turning off their transmission signals in the effort.
