Washington– The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that US military forces had boarded a third sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea in an attempt to target illicit oil linked to Venezuela.
U.S. Southern Command said in a post on the
“The ship was operating in defiance of President Trump’s quarantine on sanctioned ships in the Caribbean and attempted to evade,” the post read. “From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, we tracked it down and stopped it.”
Venezuela has faced US sanctions on its oil for several years, and has relied on a shadow fleet of tankers carrying false flags. Smuggling crude oil into global supply chains. President Donald Trump ordered quarantines on sanctioned tankers in December to pressure Venezuela Then-president Nicolas Maduro Before Maduro was arrested in January during a US military operation.
The Bertha is a Cook Islands-flagged ship subject to US sanctions related to Iran, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control website.
A video clip published by the Pentagon shows American military helicopters flying towards the tanker.
The Trump administration was Republican Seizing oil tankers As part of its broader efforts Control of Venezuela’s oil. The Pentagon publication did not say whether Bertha had been formally captured and placed under American control.
It was Maduro To the United States to face charges Working with drug gangs to facilitate drug shipments Thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States and pleaded not guilty.