The US has imposed restrictions on the oil tankers allowed to be tied up in Venezuela. How does that work?
Asked over the weekend how the US government would take control of Venezuela after it kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio instead focused on enforcing the US embargo on oil tankers.
It is that ban – announced by US President Donald Trump back in December – that will be used as a means of pressuring policy changes in Venezuela. And that’s what’s stopping the president talking about when he’s talking about Venezuela’s run, Rubio said Sunday on CBS News’ Face the Nation.
Here’s a look at the origins of the ban, what it entails, whether it’s considered legal and how it works.
Announcing the blockade
On December 16, Trump announced in a post on his social network Truth Social that Venezuela “completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in South American History.”
He went on to say that he was giving orders “a complete and total blockade of all oil tankers allowed to enter and exit Venezuela.”
He said this was because the state had been designated a foreign terrorist organization due to the theft of US assets, as well as “many other reasons, including terrorist drug trafficking and human trafficking.”
Approved oil tankers are on a list maintained by the US Treasury Department.
When Trump made the announcement, there were more than 30 vessels sanctioned by the United States, the New York Times said, citing figures from the independent tracking service Tanker Trackers.
The ships are part of the so-called “shadow fleet” of unflagged tankers that illegally transport supply chains around the world.
Those ships cover their locations by changing their automatic identification system – a mandatory safety feature meant to help avoid collisions – to go dark or “spoof” their location to appear at sea at times, under a false flag or false registration information of another vessel.
“Maduro’s regime is increasingly dependent on shadow global shipping to facilitate sanctioned activity, including evasion of sanctions, and to monetize its disruptive activities,” the Ministry of Finance said in a December 31 news release.
Should it be called a blockade?
Although Trump used the word “blockade,” some administration officials, like Rubio, instead refer to the action as a “quarantine,” an illegal reference.
An embargo, under international law, constitutes an act of war – an act of violence, that “all-encompassing instrument of war,” Andrew Latham, professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., recently wrote for The Hill.
“Trump, who doesn’t know much about these issues, has used the general term of obstruction, but the technical term, which is operational, is staying on its own,” Latham said in an interview with CBC News.
(Trump himself seemed qualified to use the word blockade in his Social Truth work, with his reference to “sanctioned” tanks, (suggesting that this was not an act of war, but a law enforcement operation.)
The Venezuelan government says the US seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela is ‘a blatant theft and an act of international crime.’ US Attorney General Pam Bondi says the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the US Coast Guard have issued a warrant to seize the vessel, alleging that it was transporting oil permitted from Venezuela and Iran.
Regarding the legality of the quarantine, Latham says that a ship that does not fly a flag or that flies another country’s flag illegally, can be searched and seized.
Mark Nevitt, a law professor at Emory University and former attorney general of the maritime justice system, told The Associated Press last month that there is a legal basis for the US to board and seize an already authorized vessel that is considered stateless or bi-state.
But he noted that a blockade is a “naval operation and maneuver” designed to block the access of ships and aircraft of an enemy country. “I think the ban is based on a false official pretense that we are fighting narcoterrorists,” he said.
Nevitt added: “This seems like a small varsity ban, where they’re trying to assert a wartime legal instrument, the ban, but they’re doing it selectively.”
How many ships were captured?
So far, only two boats have been seized, but one was before the president announced the embargo, and the other was not on the sanctions list.
On December 10, a chartered vessel called the Skipper bound for China was seized off the coast of Venezuela.
A second ship, the Centuries, boarded on December 20, but was not on the approved list.
Currently, The US military plans to intercept another authorized vessel, the Marinera, a crude oil tanker formerly known as the Bella 1, according to CBS News.
President Donald Trump says the US has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, but gave few other details, other than calling it the ‘biggest one ever.’
Are there any boats breaking the blockade?
In recent days, aat least 16 oil tankers have been hit by US sanctions so far he has managed to avoid being blocked, in part by hiding their true locations or turning off their transmission signals, the New York Times reported Monday.
Fifteen of the 16 ships that sailed on Saturday were under US sanctions for transporting Iranian and Russian oil, according to the Times.
Meanwhile, Reuters also reported that about a dozen oil tankers loaded with crude oil and gasoline from Venezuela have left the country since the beginning of the year in apparent violation of the US government’s embargo.
All of the vessels that have been identified are subject to sanctions and many are now sailing without any recognized flag or current ship security documents in place, according to shipping data.
How would the embargo affect Venezuela?
Oil exports are Venezuela’s main source of income, but exports from State oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, known as PDVSA, It stopped last week because of the blockade, Reuters reported.
Without more exports, PDVSA could be forced to deepen production cuts that began in recent days because storage tanks are full.
All this means that The ban would have a major economic impact on Venezuela. The New York Times reported that if the blockade continues, it could shut down more than 70 percent of the country’s oil production this year.
