As the US Navy intensifies its interdiction of tankers carrying sanctioned Venezuelan oil, seizing multiple vessels in recent weeks amid President Trump’s “total blockade,” scrutiny has mounted over the true intention behind this pressure campaign.
Is this dramatic military buildup and enforcement action genuinely aimed at combating drug trafficking, as the White House insists? Or is it a veiled push for regime change in Venezuela, as Maduro’s government claims?
Could the real prize be control over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the largest proven in the world, that have long fueled its economy and geopolitical leverage?
“I don’t know if the interest is only in Venezuela’s oil,” Brazil’s leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has offered to mediate in the escalating quarrel, said last week. The US president himself has accused Venezuela of taking “all of our oil” and said: “We want it back.”
Meanwhile, Trump said on Monday it would be “smart” for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step down.
Venezuela’s key ally, Russia, however, expressed its “full support” for Maduro’s government, as Washington has dialed up military operations and threats against Caracas.
Asked if Washington’s threats were designed to force Maduro to leave office after 12 years, Trump said: “That’s up to him, what he wants to do. I think it would be smart for him to do that.”
But he added: “If he wants to do something — if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’s ever able to play tough.”
Firing back just hours later, Maduro said that Trump would be “better off” if he focused on his own country’s problems rather than threatening Caracas.
“He would be better off in his own country on economic and social issues, and he would be better off in the world if he took care of his country’s affairs,” Maduro said in a speech broadcast on public television.
The pledge from Moscow, which is embroiled in the war in Ukraine, came on the eve of a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday to discuss the mounting crisis.
“The ministers expressed their deep concern over the escalation of Washington’s actions in the Caribbean Sea, which could have serious consequences for the region and threaten international shipping,” the Russian foreign ministry said of the call between Sergei Lavrov and Venezuelan counterpart Yvan Gil.
“The Russian side reaffirmed its full support for and solidarity with the Venezuelan leadership and people in the current context,” it added in a statement.
Oil Ties
Companies from the United States, now the world’s leading oil producer, have pumped Venezuelan crude from the first discoveries there in the 1920s.
Many US refineries were designed, and are still geared, specifically for processing the kind of heavy crude Venezuela has in spades.
Until 2005, Venezuela was one of the United States’ main oil suppliers, with some monthly totals reaching up to 60 million barrels.
Things changed dramatically after socialist leader Hugo Chavez took further steps in 2007 to nationalize the industry, seizing assets belonging to US firms.
Down from a peak of more than 3 million barrels per day (bpd) in the early 2000s, Venezuela today produces about 1 million barrels per day — roughly 2% of the global total.
US firm Chevron extracts about 10 percent of the total under a special license.
Chevron is the only company authorized to ship Venezuelan oil to the United States — an estimated 200,000 barrels per day, according to a Venezuelan oil-sector source.
The South American country’s domestic industry has declined sharply due to corruption, underinvestment, and US sanctions imposed since 2019.
Analysts say the high investment required to rebuild Venezuela’s crumbling oil rigs would be unattractive to US firms, given steady global supply and low prices.
According to Carlos Mendoza Potella, a Venezuelan professor of petroleum economics, Washington’s actions were likely “not just about oil” but rather about the United States claiming the Americas for itself.”
“It’s about the division of the world” between the United States and its rivals, Russia and China, he added.
Venezuela exports about 500,000 barrels per day on the black market, mainly to China and other Asian countries, according to Juan Szabo, a former vice president of state oil company PDVSA.
Blockade
Trump, on December 16, announced a blockade of sanctioned oil vessels sailing to and from Venezuela. Days earlier, US forces seized the M/T Skipper, a so-called “ghost” tanker transporting over a million barrels of Venezuelan oil, reportedly destined for Cuba.
Washington has said it intends to keep the oil, valued at between $50 and $100 million.
Over the weekend, the US Coast Guard seized the Centuries, which, according to the monitoring site TankerTrackers.com, is a Chinese-owned, Panama-flagged tanker.
An AFP review did not find the Centuries on the US Treasury Department’s sanctions list, but the White House said it “contained sanctioned PDVSA oil” — some 1.8 million barrels of it.
On Sunday, officials said the Coast Guard was pursuing a third tanker, identified by news outlets as the Bella 1 — under US sanctions because of alleged ties to Iran.
The PDVSA insists its exports remain unaffected by the blockade.
This was critical, according to Szabo, because the company can only store oil for several days if exports stop.
Impact
Whatever Trump’s goal with Venezuelan oil, the blockade, if it continues, is likely to scare off shipping companies and push up freight rates.
Szabo expects Venezuela’s oil exports to fall by nearly half in the coming months, slashing critical foreign-currency income from Venezuela’s black-market sales.
This would asphyxiate the already struggling economy of Venezuela, piling more pressure on Nicolas Maduro.
The Trump administration has tiptoed around the issue of explicitly demanding that Maduro leave. While Trump has said he does not anticipate “war” with Venezuela, he did say Maduro’s “days are numbered.”
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News on Monday that the oil tanker seizures send “a message around the world that the illegal activity that Maduro’s participating in cannot stand, he needs to be gone.”
- By Agence France-Presse (AFP)
- Edited By ET Online Desk
