BlackMask Breaking News

US forces seized two more sanctioned oil tankers as part of its energy quarantine of Venezuela, signaling that the Trump administration will ratchet up its pressure campaign days after capturing President Nicolas Maduro. The first ship, the M/V Bella 1, was seized in the Atlantic south of Iceland after a chase that began weeks ago when the vessel evaded capture near Venezuela and registered under a Russian flag in a bid to protect itself. The Pentagon then announced the seizure of the M/T Sophia, another sanctioned vessel that officials said had been conducting illicit activities in the Caribbean Sea.

“The blockade of sanctioned and illicit Venezuelan oil remains in FULL EFFECT — anywhere in the world,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on X.

The US European Command said the Bella 1 was seized for sanctions violations “pursuant to a warrant issued by a US federal court” after being tracked by a US Coast Guard vessel.

The capture of the two ships risks inflaming tensions with Russia. The Bella 1, sanctioned in 2024, had switched to a Russian flag — its crew even painted the Russian tricolor on its hull — and changed its name to the Marinera. Russia had sent a submarine and other naval assets to provide an escort for the vessel and asked the US to stop pursuing the vessel, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The M Sophia, seized with support of the UK, was sanctioned in 2025 and had been involved in the Russian oil trade, taking on cargoes from smaller ships off the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in March 2023 and delivering them to China. With the latest seizures, the US has now detained four tankers in the weeks since imposing the quarantine on ships going to and from Venezuela, according to TankerTrackers.com, which monitors the industry. It said all four are under US sanction and have transported oil on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is designated a terrorist group by the US.

The moves highlight how the administration is expanding the scope of its quarantine with a willingness to pursue ships even if they’re far away from Venezuela.

In interviews after Maduro’s ouster on January 3, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said restricting the flow of oil would be a crucial way to exert leverage on the Venezuelan leaders who succeed him. The seizure of the Bella marks the conclusion of a chase that began in late December when the tanker turned away from Venezuela and retreated out into the Atlantic Ocean in a bid to avoid a US quarantine. The Trump administration deployed its naval assets in the Caribbean to squeeze Maduro in the days before US special forces launched an operation to capture him. Trade intelligence company Kpler lists the vessel as loading about two million barrels of Venezuelan crude from the Jose export terminal in late December.

NN: US seizer of oil tankers does not add even 1 barrel of oil to the market. Instead of the oil going to China its going to America

Vice President Delcy Rodríguez — who Trump said would partner with Washington to “make Venezuela great again” — denounced the intervention as “barbaric” and a “kidnapping.” Adding to the confusion was that the White House offered few details about what running an oil-producing nation of about 30 million people would entail. A US official said Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who has spent his career criticizing Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez — would take the leading administration role. President Donald Trump said American oil companies will “spend billions of dollars” to fix oil infrastructure in Venezuela. For now, there’s no plan spelled out to have American troops or administrators in Venezuela. But Trump signaled he’s keenly focused on the country’s petroleum, saying the US would have a “presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil.” That could mean a greater role for Chevron Corp., which still operates in Venezuela under waivers from sanctions, as well as for other major American oil companies. Trump’s resistance to keeping American boots on the ground and his dismissal of Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado as a “nice woman” not ready to take power suggest he decided on giving Rodríguez and other Maduro loyalists a second chance over full-blown regime change. Trump is “essentially trying to control the vice president and people around her through carrots and sticks to get the outcomes the United States wants,” said Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. “We’ll see if it works.” On Sunday, Trump told the Atlantic magazine that some rebuilding will be needed in Venezuela as he issued a warning to Rodríguez. “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” he said. Rubio said Sunday that the US would watch her actions more than her rhetoric. “We are going to make an assessment of what they do, not what they say publicly in the interim, not what we know, what they’ve done in the past in many cases, but what they do moving forward,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “So we’re going to find out.” Trump warned of a potential second wave of American attacks if that cooperation isn’t forthcoming. “All political and military figures in Venezuela should understand what happened to Maduro can happen to them, and it will happen to them” if they weren’t “fair” to the Venezuelan people, he said. “A bigger concern really would be that this all falls apart here, that there isn’t an effort to make sure there’s a successful handoff,” said Matt Terrill, managing partner at Firehouse Strategies.

NN: This is a repeat of a previous post. All hell is about to break out. Empire building will take years and lots of tears and a hundred thousand US troops on the ground permanently. Increased oil production is not going to happen any time soon. And neither will current oil production which  is embargoed.  In the mean time Venezuela will break out in an all out civil war. Its happened everywhere else oil is worth fighting over. China, Russia, and Iran have invested 10 billion dollars in producing oil wells. They are not going to walk away from that investment without a fight.