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Four Sanctioned Oil Tankers Flee Venezuela as US Navy Hunts Them Across the Atlantic
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Oil tankers linked to Venezuela’s sanctions-busting “shadow fleet” are scrambling across the Atlantic in an apparent bid to evade US naval forces, with several vessels attempting to shield themselves by re-registering under the Russian flag, The New York Times reported on January 8.
According to satellite imagery and US military officials cited by the newspaper, a US Navy destroyer is currently tracking four oil tankers that left Venezuelan waters earlier this week and are now racing east across the Atlantic toward Africa and Europe.
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The ships are part of a larger group of 16 sanctioned tankers that appear to have coordinated a mass departure from Venezuelan ports in an effort to overwhelm US enforcement efforts.
Washington imposed a partial naval blockade on Venezuelan oil exports in mid-December. Since then, US forces have boarded or seized multiple vessels attempting to move oil in defiance of sanctions.
On Wednesday alone, American forces intercepted two tankers, including the M Sophia, which was boarded in the Caribbean, and another vessel was seized after a prolonged pursuit in the North Atlantic between Iceland and Britain.
One tanker, Veronica, which was traveling empty, changed its name to Galileo and switched its flag to Russia this week in what appeared to be a last-ditch attempt to avoid interception.
The New York Times identified at least three additional tankers—each carrying Venezuelan oil and already under US sanctions for transporting Russian or Iranian crude—that also re-registered in Russia in recent days, listing ports such as Sochi or Taganrog as their new home bases.
The coordinated breakout was a calculated gamble, said David Tannenbaum, a former US Treasury official responsible for sanctions enforcement.
“All of these vessels fleeing at once is a gamble that US forces don’t have the legal power or capability to stop them all at once,” he said. “It’s essentially a zombie race, you just have to be faster than the next boat.”
Earlier, Russia announced that the United States had decided to release two Russian crew members from a Russian-flagged oil tanker, the Venezuela-linked oil tanker Marinera, which was seized earlier this week in the North Atlantic.
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