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The Bella 1 tanker in March. Photographer: Hakon Rimmereid/MarineTraffic
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The US is still in pursuit of a third oil tanker near Venezuela, according to a US official, as President Donald Trump intensifies an oil blockade on Nicolás Maduro’s government.
The Bella 1 tanker, a Panamanian-flagged vessel sanctioned by the US, was en route to Venezuela to load, said a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. The attempted interdiction follows the boarding of the Centuries supertanker early Saturday and the Skipper on Dec. 10.
A US official said the tanker being pursued Sunday is flying under a false flag and under a judicial seizure order. Earlier, people familiar with the matter said the Bella 1 had already been boarded.
Trump has been stepping up pressure on Maduro by trying to choke off the regime’s main source of revenue. If Venezuela can’t export its oil, its storage tanks will fill up with stranded supply and state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, will have to start closing oil wells, industry experts say.
Trump also previously designated the Maduro government as a foreign terrorist organization, accusing it of involvement in drug trafficking.
Saturday’s boarding was notable because the ship hadn’t appeared on the public US sanctions list. The Centuries tanker was flying a Panamanian flag, Bloomberg reported earlier, while a Chinese company holds title to the oil.
The tanker contained sanctioned PDVSA oil, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a post on X.
Venezuelan Vice President and Oil Minister Delcy Rodriguez condemned “the theft and kidnapping” of the Centuries tanker on Saturday, calling the move “a serious act of piracy” by the US government.
The country’s oil production reached the government’s 1.2 million barrels per day target, Rodriguez said earlier this weekend.
But the blockade appears to be putting pressure on Venezuela’s oil storage.
“PDVSA is filling up its storage tanks and cabotage vessels normally used for short internal hauls. It’s a matter of days before production starts shutting down,” said Evanan Romero, an oil adviser to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
Romero, a Houston-based veteran of Venezuela’s oil industry, predicted that an imminent production collapse could trigger widespread unrest as the currency plummets and people struggle to buy food.
The escalation threatens to more severely curtail exports from the country and could pinch production there by limiting supplies of lighter diluent needed to facilitate crude flows.
“If the first seizure focused minds in Caracas, subsequent interceptions could winnow exports,” said Kevin Book, managing director at Washington-based ClearView Energy Partners. “Even before the blockade, the US armada may have pared export volumes by deterring outbound ships and curtailed heavy oil production by blocking inbound tankers carrying diluent.”
Schreiner Parker, a partner and head of emerging markets at Oslo-based Rystad Energy, said that the US blockade will likely deter much of the oil shipping industry from serving Venezuela.
“Oil tankers are not the blockade runners of old, and with the advanced radar and satellite technologies available to the US Navy, simply turning off a transponder or using a false flag won’t be sufficient to evade detection,” he said. “This means the Trump blockade could ostensibly result in a total stoppage of Venezuela’s crude exports.”
US government officials, meanwhile, have brushed aside potential impacts on global oil prices.
“It’s not a lot of oil compared to world supply,” White House National Economic Council chief Kevin Hassett said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, responding to Saturday’s ship interdiction. “And so I don’t think that people need to be worried here in the US that the prices are going to go up because of these seizures of these ships.”
— With assistance from Tony Czuczka
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