Trump Orders Blockade of Sanctioned Oil Tankers in Venezuela

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(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump said he was ordering a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers going into and leaving Venezuela, ratcheting up pressure on Caracas amid a US military buildup in the region and the threat of land strikes.

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“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump wrote on social media Tuesday. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”

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Trump said he was also designating the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as a “FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.” And he accused the “illegitimate” regime of “using Oil from these stolen Oil Fields to finance themselves, Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping.”

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The move represents an escalation of the Trump administration’s pressure on Maduro, whom it has accused of presiding over a narco-trafficking operation. Oil prices rose following the US president’s post. West Texas Intermediate climbed as much as 1.7%, rallying from the lowest level in almost five years.

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Venezuela condemned Trump’s latest measure as a “reckless and serious” threat.

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“Trump intends to impose, in an utterly irrational manner, a supposed military blockade of Venezuela with the aim of stealing the riches that belong to our homeland,” the government said in a statement published late Tuesday on Vice President Delcy Rodríguez’s Telegram account. “Venezuela reaffirms its sovereignty over all its natural resources.”

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Venezuela said in its statement that its ambassador to the United Nations would immediately denounce what it called a “grave” violation of international law.

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Pressure point

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By targeting oil, Trump is hitting the linchpin of Venezuela’s economy. The government’s supply of dollars is almost entirely tied to crude sales and oil-trading restrictions imposed by the US earlier this year are already pushing the nation to the brink of hyperinflation.

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Last week, the US seized a sanctioned oil tanker, named The Skipper, off Venezuela’s coast. A day later, three supertankers originally headed for Venezuela reversed course following the seizure, and a fourth turned around earlier this week. 

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The Pentagon has also conducted more than 20 strikes against purported drug-trafficking vessels in waters near Venezuela and Colombia, killing dozens, and Trump has suggested numerous times that the US could strike countries on land and that Maduro should be removed from power. 

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It wasn’t immediately clear what stolen land and assets Trump was referencing in his demand. Venezuela has nationalized the oil industry and many others in recent decades, forcing foreign companies to leave the country. Many of those expropriations were carried out by the late Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s predecessor and mentor.