President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is ordering a blockade of all “sanctioned oil tankers” into Venezuela, ramping up pressure on the country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, in a move that appeared designed to place a tighter chokehold on the South American nation’s economy.
Trump’s escalation comes after US forces last week seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast, an unusual move that followed a build-up of military forces in the region. In a social media post Tuesday night announcing the blockade, Trump alleged that Venezuela was using oil revenue to fund drug trafficking and other crimes. He vowed to continue the military build-up until the country turned over oil, land and other assets to the United States, though it was not clear why he believed the US had a claim to them.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump said on his social media platform. “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.”
Pentagon officials referred all questions about the post to the White House.
Venezuela struck a defiant note Wednesday, insisting that crude oil exports were not impacted by Trump’s announcement of a blockade.
“Export operations for crude and byproducts continue normally. Oil tankers linked to PDVSA operations continue to sail,” state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) said in a statement.
Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about 1 million barrels a day, has long relied on oil revenue as the backbone of its economy.
Since the Trump administration began imposing oil sanctions in 2017, Maduro’s government has relied on a shadowy fleet of unflagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.
The state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., known as PDVSA, has been effectively locked out of global oil markets by US sanctions. It sells most of its exports at a steep discount on the black market, primarily to China.
Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan oil expert at Rice University in Houston, said roughly 850,000 barrels of Venezuela’s daily production are exported. About 80 percent goes to China, 15 percent to 17 percent goes to the US through Chevron Corp., and the remainder goes to Cuba.
Source: France24
