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Washington,.- The president of the United States, Donald Trump, announced this Wednesday that his country intercepted and seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, raising tensions between Washington and Caracas.
"We have just seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a large oil tanker, a very large one, the largest ever seized, actually," the president declared at the start of a round table with businessmen at the White House.You may be interested in: http://Trump warns Petro that he will be "the next" after Maduro
The Bloomberg agency had first reported exclusively, citing familiar sources, that a tanker sanctioned by the United States had been seized by the North American country off the coast of Venezuela. According to The New York Times, the tanker, named Skipper and sailing under a false flag, was seized by order of a U.S. judge for its previous links to the smuggling of Iranian oil, sanctioned by Washington, and not for any relationship with the government of Nicolás Maduro, although on this occasion it was transporting Venezuelan crude. These events occur on the same day as the ceremony in Oslo where the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who did not attend, although she assured that she will arrive in the Norwegian capital in the coming hours. The Donald Trump administration has increased pressure on the government of Nicolás Maduro, whom it accuses of leading an international drug trafficking network through the alleged criminal group Cartel de los Soles, something that Caracas vehemently denies. Since September, the U.S. Armed Forces have destroyed more than twenty vessels allegedly loaded with drugs in the Caribbean and the Pacific, extrajudicially killing more than 80 crew members. Trump has promised that attacks will begin "soon" within Venezuelan territory, while Maduro has called on his citizens to unite against American threats and enlist in citizen militias. PDVSA, the Venezuelan state-owned oil company, is working on drilling tasks with the American company Chevron, which has a license from the Treasury Department that exempts it from sanctions.
