Trump says the US has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela
[December 11, 2025]
By AAMER MADHANI, KONSTANTIN TOROPIN, JOSHUA GOODMAN and
REGINA GARCIA CANO
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the United
States has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela as tensions
mount with the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
Using U.S. forces to take control of a merchant ship is incredibly
unusual and marks the Trump administration’s latest push to increase
pressure on Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the
United States. The U.S. has built up the largest military presence in
the region in decades and launched a series of deadly strikes on alleged
drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The
campaign is facing growing scrutiny from Congress.
“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker,
very large, largest one ever seized, actually,” Trump told reporters at
the White House, later adding that "it was seized for a very good
reason.”
Trump did not offer additional details. When asked what would happen to
the oil aboard the tanker, Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.”
The seizure was led by the U.S. Coast Guard and supported by the Navy,
according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly
and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official added that it was
conducted under U.S. law enforcement authority.
Storming the oil tanker
The Coast Guard members were taken to the oil tanker by helicopter from
the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the official said. The Ford is
in the Caribbean Sea after arriving last month in a major show of force,
joining a fleet of other warships.
Video posted to social media by Attorney General Pam Bondi shows people
fast-roping from one of the helicopters involved in the operation as it
hovers just feet from the deck.
The Coast Guard members can be seen later in the video moving throughout
the superstructure of the ship with their weapons drawn.
Bondi wrote that “for multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned
by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping
network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.”
Venezuela’s government said in a statement that the seizure “constitutes
a blatant theft and an act of international piracy.”
“Under these circumstances, the true reasons for the prolonged
aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed. … It has always
been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, the resources
that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people,” the statement said.
Half of ship's oil is tied to Cuban importer
The U.S. official identified the seized tanker as the Skipper.
The ship departed Venezuela around Dec. 2 with about 2 million barrels
of heavy crude, roughly half of it belonging to a Cuban state-run oil
importer, according to documents from the state-owned company Petróleos
de Venezuela S.A., commonly known as PDVSA, that were provided on the
condition of anonymity because the person did not have permission to
share them.
The Skipper was previously known as the M/T Adisa, according to ship
tracking data. The Adisa was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022 over
accusations of belonging to a sophisticated network of shadow tankers
that smuggled crude oil on behalf of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and
Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group.
The network was reportedly run by a Switzerland-based Ukrainian oil
trader, the U.S. Treasury Department said at the time.
Hitting Venezuela's sanctioned oil business
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about
1 million barrels a day.
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President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable in the Roosevelt
Room of the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025, in Washington.
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
PDVSA is the backbone of the country’s economy. Its reliance on
intermediaries increased in 2020, when the first Trump
administration expanded its maximum-pressure campaign on Venezuela
with sanctions that threaten to lock out of the U.S. economy any
individual or company that does business with Maduro’s government.
Longtime allies Russia and Iran, both also sanctioned, have helped
Venezuela skirt restrictions.
The transactions usually involve a complex network of shadowy
intermediaries. Many are shell companies, registered in
jurisdictions known for secrecy. The buyers deploy so-called ghost
tankers that hide their location and hand off their valuable cargoes
in the middle of the ocean before they reach their final
destination.
Maduro did not address the seizure during a speech before a
ruling-party organized demonstration in Caracas, Venezuela’s
capital. But he told supporters that the country is “prepared to
break the teeth of the North American empire if necessary.”
Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations
is to force him from office.
Democrat says the move is about ‘regime change’
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., a member of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, said the U.S. seizing the oil tanker cast doubt
on the administration’s stated reasons for the military buildup and
boat strikes.
“This shows that their whole cover story — that this is about
interdicting drugs — is a big lie,” the senator said. “This is just
one more piece of evidence that this is really about regime change —
by force.”
Vincent P. O’Hara, a naval historian and author of “The Greatest
Naval War Ever Fought,” called the seizure “very unusual” and
"provocative." Noting that the action will probably deter other
ships from the Venezuela coastline, he said, "If you have no
maritime traffic or access to that, then you have no economy.”
The seizure comes a day after the U.S. military flew a pair of
fighter jets over the Gulf of Venezuela in what appeared to be the
closest that warplanes had come to the South American country’s
airspace. Trump has said land attacks are coming soon but has not
offered more details.
The Trump administration is facing increasing scrutiny from
lawmakers over the boat strike campaign, which has killed at least
87 people in 22 known strikes since early September, including a
follow-up strike that killed two survivors clinging to the wreckage
of a boat after the first hit.
Some legal experts and Democrats say that action may have violated
the laws governing the use of deadly military force.
Lawmakers are demanding to get unedited video from the strikes, but
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told congressional leaders at a
classified briefing Tuesday that he was still weighing whether to
release it.
The Coast Guard referred a request for comment about the tanker
seizure to the White House.
___
Goodman reported from Miami, and Garcia Cano from Caracas,
Venezuela. Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Alanna Durkin
Richer in Washington, Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, and Susan Haigh
in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.
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