U.S. Coast Guard Boards Tanker Carrying Venezuelan Oil

The vessel, which was flying a Panamanian flag, was not on a list of tankers under U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. Coast Guard stopped and boarded a Panamanian-flagged tanker carrying Venezuelan oil early Saturday, according to a U.S. official and two people inside Venezuela’s oil industry.

All three spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. The boarding represents the United States’ second action this month against a tanker carrying Venezuelan crude oil to Asia, escalating President Trump’s pressure campaign against the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Maduro of flooding the United States with fentanyl and of stealing oil from American companies, without providing evidence.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump had announced “a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela.”

But the vessel boarded on Saturday, called the Centuries, is not on a list of tankers under U.S. sanctions that is publicly maintained by the Treasury Department. The people inside Venezuela’s oil industry said the cargo belongs to an established China-based oil trader with a history of taking Venezuelan crude oil to Chinese refineries.

The ship had recently left Venezuela and was in Caribbean waters.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said in a post on X Saturday afternoon that the Coast Guard had “apprehended” a tanker that had been docked in Venezuela.

“The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region,” she wrote. “We will find you, and we will stop you.”

Ms. Noem also posted a video that appeared to show U.S. forces rappelling from a helicopter onto the ship’s deck.

It was unclear how long the United States intended to detain the Centuries. The U.S. official said that American authorities did not have a seizure warrant to take possession of the ship, as they did when they seized another tanker earlier this month that was carrying Venezuelan oil.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

The Venezuelan government said in a statement that the country “denounces and categorically rejects the theft and hijacking of another private vessel transporting Venezuelan oil, as well as the forced disappearance of its crew.”

The Centuries had loaded between 1.8 million and two million barrels of Merey-16 crude oil at the José Terminal in Venezuela between Dec. 7 and Dec. 11, according to data analyzed by TankerTrackers.com and Kpler, two companies that monitor global shipping. The voyage marked the vessel’s seventh export of Venezuelan oil since 2020.

With tensions between the United States and Venezuela rising significantly, Mr. Maduro recently ordered his navy to escort oil tankers leaving Venezuelan ports. On Thursday, satellite imagery reviewed by The New York Times showed the Centuries heading east, flanked by three vessels that may have belonged to the Venezuelan Navy. The flotilla appeared to escort the supertanker, alongside two other merchant vessels, to the limit of Venezuela’s exclusive economic zone and did not seem to have been present during the boarding on Saturday.

International law states a ship may be boarded if there are reasonable grounds to believe it is not legitimately registered to the state whose flag it is flying. The U.S. official said that the Coast Guard was trying to determine if the Centuries’s Panama registration was valid.

On Dec. 10, armed U.S. agents boarded and seized a tanker called the Skipper that was carrying Venezuelan oil, was flying a false flag and was under U.S. sanctions for previously carrying Iranian crude. In that case, American authorities had obtained a seizure warrant for the Skipper from a federal judge, based on the vessel’s connections to Iran, which the United States has said sells oil to finance terrorism.

Centuries has no known connection to Iran and is not known to have not transported Iranian oil, according to the people inside Venezuela’s oil industry and data from TankerTrackers.com and Kpler. .

Reporting was contributed by Edward Wong, John Ismay, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Simon Romero.

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