Caracas announced this Sunday, December 21, the shipment of Venezuelan oil to the United States through Chevron, while Washington continued the pursuit of a third oil tanker in the Caribbean, intensifying the blockade of ships linked to PDVSA.
Venezuela’s Executive Vice President and Minister of Hydrocarbons, Delcy Rodríguez, reported on her channel on the Telegram platform that the Canopus Voyager ship left “with Venezuelan oil heading to the United States”, in “strict compliance with the rules” and the commitments of the national oil industry.
Despite the sanctions imposed on Venezuelan crude, Chevron operates in the country in association with the state-owned PDVSA under a special license issued by the US Treasury Department.
“Venezuela has always been and will continue to be respectful of national and international legality. Nothing and no one will stop our homeland on its path of advancement and victory!”, declared Rodríguez, also sharing a video of the ship.
The operation takes place in a context of strong bilateral tension: Washington confiscated two oil tankers in recent weeks and on Sunday continued the pursuit of a third ship, the Bella 1, the target of sanctions since 2024 for alleged links to Iran and Hezbollah, according to the North American press.
A US official confirmed to AFP that the US coast guard is “actively pursuing a sanctioned vessel” involved in the alleged “illegal circumvention of sanctions by the Venezuelan regime”.
The ship was sailing under a false flag and is under judicial seizure order.
According to the New York Times, US forces approached the Bella 1 on Saturday night, after obtaining a warrant from a federal judge, but the tanker did not comply with the order and continued sailing. The TankerTrackers portal indicated that the ship was heading to Venezuela and was not carrying cargo.
This is the third US operation in the Caribbean Sea in the space of two weeks: on Saturday, the US confiscated the Panama-flagged Centuries oil tanker, which, according to the White House, was part of the “ghost fleet” used to “traffick stolen oil and finance Maduro’s narco-terrorist regime”. The first interception occurred on December 10, with the seizure of the Skipper ship.
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, justified the operations with the allegation that Venezuelan oil is being used to finance “narcoterrorism, human trafficking, homicides and kidnappings”. Caracas rejected the accusations, classifying the seizures as “theft”, and denounced a campaign to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro and seize the country’s oil reserves.
Maduro also accused the US of acting like “modern pirates” and stated that Venezuela took “25 weeks to denounce, confront and defeat a campaign of aggression that ranges from psychological terrorism to the robberies of oil tankers”.