The United States is pursuing its third oil tanker in international waters near Venezuela in less than a week.
“The United States Guard is in active pursuit of a sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion,” a U.S. official told Reuters.
“It is flying a false flag and under a judicial seizure order.”
The official did not give a specific location for the operation or the name of the vessel being pursued.
Director of the White House’s National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, said the first two oil tankers seized were operating on the black market and providing oil to countries under sanctions.
“And so I don’t think that people need to be worried here in the U.S. that the prices are going to go up because of these seizures of these ships,” Hassett said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program.
“There’s just a couple of them, and they were black market ships.”
However, an oil trader told Reuters that the seizures could lead to slightly higher oil prices when Asian trading resumes on Monday.
“We might see prices increasing modestly at the opening, considering market participants could see this as an escalation with more Venezuelan barrels at risk as the tanker was not on a U.S. sanctions list,” UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo said.
Another trader said it could increase geopolitical risks, increasing friction in shadow fleet vessels that move oil from sanctioned countries like Venezuela, Russia and Iran.
The operation comes after the U.S. seized its second vessel off the coast of Venezuela in less than two weeks as part of a “blockade’ ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump.
It comes as the White House intensifies a pressure campaign against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
This has included ramped-up military presence in the region and more than two dozen military strikes on vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near the South American nation.
At least 100 people have been killed in the attacks.
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