Spanish
Caracas,.- The Government of Venezuela described this Wednesday as a "blatant robbery" the confiscation by the United States of an oil tanker off the coast of the South American country and warned that it will go to international instances to denounce "this serious international crime".
"This new criminal act is added to the theft of Citgo, an important asset of the strategic heritage of all Venezuelans, snatched through fraudulent judicial mechanisms and outside of any norm," the Foreign Ministry stated in a statement published on Telegram, alluding to the subsidiary of the state-owned Pdvsa in US territory, whose sale was approved by a judge in that country in an auction organized by the court to pay the creditors of the South American country.
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This Wednesday, US President Donald Trump had announced that his country intercepted and seized an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast, raising tensions between Washington and Caracas. "We have just seized a tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a large 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. According to The New York Times, the tanker, named Skipper and sailing under a false flag, was seized by order of a US judge for its previous links to the smuggling of Iranian oil, sanctioned by Washington, although on this occasion it was transporting Venezuelan crude. In the opinion of the Chancellery, in these circumstances, "the true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed." "It's not migration, it's not drug trafficking, it's not democracy, it's not human rights, it was always about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, the resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people," he pointed out. For the Foreign Office, this "act of piracy" seeks to distract attention and "cover up the resounding failure" of what it called a "political show staged today in Oslo", where the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony was held for the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, absent from the event and represented by her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa. "Venezuela calls on all the Venezuelan people to stand firm in defense of the homeland and urges the international community to reject this unprecedented, illegal, and vandalistic aggression that is intended to be normalized as a tool of pressure and plunder," he added. In that context, the Venezuelan government warned that it will go to "all" international instances to denounce this event and, it maintained, will defend with "absolute determination" its sovereignty, natural resources, and national dignity. "Venezuela will not allow any foreign power to try to take away from the Venezuelan people what belongs to them by historical and constitutional right," he stressed. 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.
