Some sanctioned oil vessels divert from Venezuela as Trump threatens blockade

Some oil ves­sels are di­vert­ing away from Venezuela af­ter U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump threat­ened a “block­ade” of sanc­tioned oil tankers en­ter­ing or leav­ing the South Amer­i­can coun­try, a dra­mat­ic es­ca­la­tion in the White House’s pres­sure cam­paign on leader Nicolás Maduro.

Trump said Tues­day on so­cial me­dia, in all caps, that he is or­der­ing a “to­tal and com­plete block­ade of all sanc­tioned oil tankers” in­to and out of Venezuela, a move that threat­ens to choke off rev­enue from the world’s largest oil re­serves that are key to Maduro’s grip on pow­er.

It’s not clear ex­act­ly what Trump meant by his threats. U.S. sanc­tions adopt­ed dur­ing his first ad­min­is­tra­tion makes it il­le­gal for Amer­i­cans to pur­chase Venezuela’s crude oil with­out a li­cense from the Trea­sury De­part­ment.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, hun­dreds of ships them­selves have been sanc­tioned — part of a mas­sive shad­ow fleet of of­ten ag­ing ves­sels that has pro­lif­er­at­ed in re­cent years to trans­port oil on be­half of Iran, Rus­sia, Venezuela and oth­er U.S. ad­ver­saries un­der sanc­tions.

At least 30 ves­sels un­der sanc­tions are nav­i­gat­ing near Venezuela, ac­cord­ing to Wind­ward, a mar­itime in­tel­li­gence firm that helps U.S. of­fi­cials tar­get the shad­ow fleet. A few have start­ed to change their course, per­haps fear­ing they could face the same fate as the Skip­per, a sanc­tioned ves­sel seized by U.S. forces last week near Venezuela.

“It’s quite clear that this has dis­rupt­ed en­er­gy flows to and from Venezuela,” said Michelle Wiese Bock­mann, a se­nior an­a­lyst at Wind­ward. “Every hour when we’re track­ing these ves­sels, we are see­ing tankers that are de­vi­at­ing, loi­ter­ing or chang­ing their be­hav­iour.”

Among those is the Hy­pe­r­i­on, which had been sail­ing to­ward the Jose port in Venezuela be­fore do­ing a 90-de­gree turn ear­ly Wednes­day and start­ing to head north away from the South Amer­i­can main­land.

The ves­sel, pre­vi­ous­ly part of Rus­sia’s state-owned ship­ping fleet, was one of 173 sanc­tioned in the fi­nal days of the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion for al­leged­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ing Russ­ian oil sales in vi­o­la­tion of sanc­tions over Moscow’s in­va­sion of Ukraine.

Fol­low­ing the penal­ties, the ves­sel changed its flag from the Co­moros to Gam­bia. But the West African na­tion delet­ed Hy­pe­r­i­on — along with dozens of oth­er ves­sels — from its pri­vate­ly run ship reg­istry in No­vem­ber for al­leged­ly us­ing false cer­tifi­cates claim­ing to have been is­sued by its mar­itime au­thor­i­ty.

The ves­sel’s own­er­ship al­so is ob­fus­cat­ed un­der mul­ti­ple lay­ers of off­shore com­pa­nies, some of them list­ed in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

“It’s just scream­ing that it’s in a po­si­tion to be seized,” Wiese Bock­mann said. —MI­A­MI (AP)

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Sto­ry by JOSHUA GOOD­MAN

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Michael Bieseck­er con­tributed to this re­port from Wash­ing­ton.