US detains tanker off Venezuela's coast. Oil prices rose by more than 1%

The U.S. has detained a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, President Donald Trump said. "As you probably know, we just detained a tanker off the coast of Venezuela - a large tanker, very large, the largest tanker ever detained," Trump said at the White House. "There are other things going on," he added(quotes via Bloomberg).

Shortly before that, the detention of the tanker was reported by Reuters and Bloomberg sources. According to a Bloomberg interlocutor in the White House administration, the U.S. conducted "law enforcement actions against a vessel with no state affiliation," whose last port of call was Venezuela. Venezuela's largest oil and gas state-owned company PDVSA and the country's oil and information ministries did not respond to the agency's requests for comment.

After the news about the detention of the tanker, oil futures rose, although earlier in the day they traded in the negative. At the time of publication, the cost of Brent and WTI added more than 1%. The incident may greatly complicate the export of Venezuelan oil, as carriers are likely to be less willing to load it, Bloomberg writes. Venezuela exported more than 900,000 bpd of oil in November, Reuters writes. Most Venezuelan oil goes to China, usually through intermediaries and at deep discounts due to sanctions risks.

The tanker's detention also signals a serious rise in tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela, Bloomberg notes. "This is a clear escalation: from financial sanctions to physical interdiction. This raises the stakes for Caracas and anyone who helps export oil," Jorge Leon, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy, told the agency. - Such actions create a geopolitical floor for prices: when it comes to shipping routes and interstate escalation, even small supplies can change market sentiment."

The U.S. has increased pressure on Venezuela in recent months as part of a crackdown on drug trafficking, which the Trump administration claims Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's regime is behind. Earlier in the campaign, Trump sent a large group of troops to Venezuela's coast. The US president has also repeatedly hinted at a possible ground operation in Venezuela, claiming that "Maduro's days are numbered." Maduro's government has characterized the U.S. action as an attempt to seize Venezuela's oil reserves, some of the largest in the world. Maduro has previously called on Venezuelans to "give their lives" if necessary to defend the country from "imperialist attacks."

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor