The United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) on Tuesday announced the U.S. seized another oil tanker that stood in defiance of the Venezuelan oil blockade ordered by President Donald Trump.
Ship tracking services detected around a dozen ships identified as loaded oil tankers departing from Venezuela in the first week of 2026, all of them targeted by U.S. sanctions.
On Friday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said that President Trump has been going after oil tankers because there’s “this ghost fleet that helps keep Venezuela’s regime alive. He should be using those same tools
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Wednesday imposed sanctions on four companies and four tankers aiding Venezuela’s socialist Maduro regime evade U.S. oil sanctions.
The Trump administration’s “blockade” of illegal Venezuelan oil shipments is among the few serious efforts at controlling the “shadow fleet” or “dark fleet” – the vast armada of tankers flying false flags, submitting false paperwork, shutting down their identification equipment, and helping rogue nations like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela evade U.S. sanctions against their oil industries.
The White House ordered U.S. military forces to almost exclusively focus on enforcing a “quarantine” of Venezuelan oil for the next two months “at least,” according to a report published by Reuters on Wednesday.
Maritime tracking data released on Monday showed that international oil tankers have dramatically scaled back loading activity at Venezuelan ports, fearful of a crackdown by the Trump administration on illegal sanctions-busting oil shipments.
The U.S. Coast Guard is awaiting for additional resources to arrive before potentially attempting to stop and board another oil tanker linked to Venezuela’s socialist Maduro regime, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
Foreign Minister of Panama Javier Martínez-Acha said on Monday that the Panama-flagged oil tanker recently interdicted by the United States failed to comply with the country’s maritime rules.
On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” CNN Senior Political and National Security Analyst and New York Times White House and National Security Correspondent David Sanger is going after ships that are under sanction and “many of these sanctions go back to
Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro issued a furious six-page letter to international heads of state and to the United Nations denouncing the United States’ drug-fighting efforts as part of Operation Southern Spear.
On Monday’s broadcast of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) stated that there is a legal basis to stop and board some oil tankers around Venezuela, but that’s “sort of beside the point.” And “we could cut off funds
On Monday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said that there may be a legal justification to go after some Venezuelan oil tankers, but he is worried “that we’re going to turn Venezuela into another American military
The United States Coast Guard is in pursuit of a third sanctioned oil tanker near Venezuelan waters, both Reuters and Bloomberg reported on Sunday. Both outlets identified the vessel as the Bella 1, an oil tanker reportedly en route to
In a stealth operation carried out before dawn on Dec. 20, the U.S. Coast Guard—working alongside the Department of War—seized an oil tanker last seen in the terrorist state of Venezuela. The United States accused the ship’s operators of moving sanctioned crude to fuel narco‑terror activity. Officials issued a stark warning to traffickers: “We will find you, and we will stop you.
President Donald Trump ordered a “total and complete” blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuela — increasing pressure on the socialist Maduro regime.
On Tuesday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s “Cuomo,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) stated that the blocking and seizing of sanctioned oil tankers around Venezuela “makes a lot of sense,” and sanctioned oil is helping countries like Iran and China and Russia are
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization and arm of the Iranian military, seized a oil vessel allegedly carrying “smuggled diesel” in the Persian Gulf, Tehran revealed on Thursday.
On Wednesday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “The Weeknight,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) responded to the seizure of an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast by saying that even if the administration got a warrant to take the ship into custody,
Officials of Venezuela’s socialist Maduro regime claimed President Donald Trump “confessed” to having “stolen” a sanctioned oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon announced that the United States has seized an oil tanker bound for Cuba as it was sailing off the coast of Venezuela.
Finnish authorities have accused senior officers of a Russia-linked vessel of damaging undersea cables last year between Finland and Estonia.
Rescue workers have successfully removed almost 1,500 tons of oil left onboard a tanker that ran aground last year in southern Russia, officials said Saturday. The mishap resulted in a devastating oil spill that damaged miles (kilometers) of coastline along the Black Sea.
More than 7,500 people, many of them volunteers, raced to rescue wildlife and clean up shorelines blighted by mazut, a heavy, low-quality oil product, according to Russian news reports.
Two Russian oil tankers were wrecked in the Kerch Strait over the weekend, coating almost 40 miles of Black Sea coastline in heavy fuel oil.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion, abandoned in the Red Sea after a pirate attack by the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen last week, appears to be leaking oil — possibly the prelude to a much-feared environmental catastrophe.
A Greek oil tanker traveling through the Red Sea came under repeated attacks, leaving the vessel “not under command” and drifting ablaze.
The U.S. and UK on Saturday launched a fourth round of “self-defense” airstrikes against 18 targets in Yemen controlled by the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists, destroying missile storage facilities, drones, radars, and one helicopter.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels on Saturday claimed an attack a day earlier on an oil tanker in the Red Sea.
Three stowaways were discovered perched on the rudder of a ship following a journey from Nigeria, and the men were later hospitalized, according to Spanish officials.
An armed drone struck a Liberian-flagged oil tanker named Pacific Zircon off the coast of Oman on Tuesday night.
A Peruvian oil tanker spilled much of its contents into the waters of the Pacific Ocean on Saturday affecting at least two miles of Peru’s central coast after waves sparked by Tonga’s volcanic eruption and tsunami that day in the South Pacific rocked the actively discharging ship, Peruvian government officials said Monday.
The UKMTO warned of a “potential hijack” of a ship off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf of Oman, without elaborating.
Western intelligence sources told Fox News on Tuesday that Iran has dispatched another oil tanker to Syria in defiance of U.S. sanctions. Meanwhile, the first sanctions-busting ship was leased to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in another apparent gesture of defiance to the United States.
The U.S. State Department on Monday warned Greece not to allow the Iranian oil tanker Adrian Darya 1 to dock because the ship is carrying “illicit oil to fuel the Iranian regime’s and Syrian regime’s campaigns of terror and oppression.” Greek officials insisted they have not received a request from the tanker for docking, even though its destination appears to be the Greek port of Kalamata.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry warned of “heavy consequences” on Monday should the United States seize an oil tanker recently released by Gilbraltar after being impounded for six weeks.
Ukrainian state security forces detained a Russian oil tanker in the port of Izmail on Wednesday, seizing documents and questioning the crew before releasing them. Ukraine said the action was taken due to the Russian ship’s involvement in the November 2018 Kerch Strait confrontation, which ended with Russia seizing a Ukrainian ship and imprisoning its 24 crew members.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Sunday that Iran’s arguments for seizing a British-flagged oil tanker on Friday are “much more right than those of Gibraltar and London, who are indulging in piracy.”
After a week of insisting it merely assisted a vessel in distress by bringing it to a safe harbor, Iran on Thursday admitted its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States – seized a foreign oil tanker and took its crew prisoner.
A senior adviser to the Iranian government said on Friday that war is “inevitable” if the United States does not lift sanctions against Iran.
