The Pentagon announced on Sunday that U.S. forces boarded another sanctioned "shadow fleet" tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the vessel from the Caribbean Sea amid efforts to halt illicit oil shipments linked to Venezuela. As AP notes, the "Veronica III" has been involved in transporting Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan oil since 2023, writes UNN.
Overnight, U.S. forces conducted a maritime interdiction and boarding of the Veronica III without incident in the INDOPACOM area of responsibility.
Details
As AP notes, Venezuela has faced U.S. sanctions on its oil for several years, relying on a "shadow fleet" of tankers under false flags to smuggle oil into global supply chains. In December, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the quarantine of sanctioned tankers to pressure then-President Nicolas Maduro, before Maduro was arrested in January during a U.S. military operation.
As a result of the raid, several tankers left the Venezuelan coast, including the vessel boarded in the Indian Ocean overnight, AP writes.
"The vessel attempted to circumvent President Trump's quarantine, hoping to slip away," the Pentagon stated. "We tracked it from the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and stopped it."
Video released by the Pentagon shows U.S. forces boarding the tanker.
According to the website of the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, the publication writes, the "Veronica III" is a Panamanian-flagged vessel under U.S. sanctions related to Iran. On Sunday, the Panamanian Maritime Authority stated in a brief announcement that the vessel is no longer registered in the country and its registration was canceled in December 2024.
The "Veronica III," AP notes, left Venezuela on January 3, the same day Maduro was captured, with nearly 2 million barrels of oil and fuel oil, TankerTrackers.com reported on Sunday.
"Since 2023, it has been involved in transporting Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan oil," the organization's report states.
Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, told the Associated Press in January that his organization used satellite imagery and surface photographs to document that at least 16 tankers had left the Venezuelan coast, violating the quarantine.
The Trump administration is seizing tankers as part of broader efforts to gain control over Venezuelan oil. The Pentagon did not specify in its report whether the tanker Veronica III was officially seized and transferred to U.S. control, and later stated in an email to AP that it had no additional information beyond this publication.
Last week, U.S. forces boarded another tanker in the Indian Ocean, the Aquila II. According to a Pentagon official, as AP writes, the vessel was held until the United States decided its fate.