Photo: Alamy
U.S. military forces boarded a sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the vessel from the Caribbean Sea, the Pentagon said Sunday, as the Trump administration continued efforts to disrupt illicit oil shipments linked to Venezuela.
The operation targeted the Veronica III, a ship the Defense Department said had attempted to evade a U.S. quarantine on sanctioned tankers established in December. Venezuela has faced U.S. oil sanctions for several years, with officials alleging that a shadow fleet of vessels has been used to move crude through global supply chains.
President Donald Trump ordered the quarantine as part of pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro before Maduro was captured in a U.S. raid in January. Several tankers reportedly left Venezuelan waters afterward, including the Veronica III.
In a post on X, the Pentagon said U.S. forces conducted “a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding.”
“The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine — hoping to slip away,” the Pentagon said. “We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down.”
The Veronica III was previously registered in Panama and is subject to U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Panama’s maritime authority said Sunday that the ship’s registration had been canceled in December 2024.
TankerTrackers.com said the vessel departed Venezuela on Jan. 3, the same day Maduro was captured, carrying nearly 2 million barrels of crude and fuel oil.
“Since 2023, she’s been involved with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil,” the organization said.
Samir Madani, CEO of TankerTrackers.com, told The Associated Press in January that satellite imagery and photos showed at least 16 tankers leaving Venezuelan waters in violation of the quarantine.
The Trump administration has been seizing tankers as part of its broader campaign to control Venezuelan oil exports. The boarding follows a similar operation last week involving the tanker Aquila II, which was intercepted in the Indian Ocean and remains in U.S. custody.