EXCLUSIVE: US seizes vessels off Venezuela coast, officials say. Read more below 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

The seizure comes comes days after President Trump announced a “blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.
The United States interdicted a tanker off the coast of Venezuela, two sources familiar with the raid told USA TODAY on Dec. 20, just days after President Donald Trump announced a “blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.

The sources identified the vessel as the Centuries, which maritime records show is a Panama-flagged oil tanker. The ship is not under U.S. sanctions, the sources said. Marine traffic trackers showed the Centuries was off the coast of Venezuela in the waters of Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island.

The Centuries is a 333-meter-long oil tanker that last docked in Singapore in October, according to vessel tracker Maritime Optima. Its reported seizure would mark the second time in recent weeks that the United States has seized a tanker near Venezuela and comes amid a large U.S. military build-up in the region. The seizure was first reported by Reuters.

Three officials told Reuters the Coast Guard was in the lead. The Coast Guard and Pentagon referred questions to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Venezuela’s oil ministry and state oil company PDVSA did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

“I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela,” Trump said on Tuesday.

In the days since U.S. forces seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela last week, there has been an effective embargo in place, with loaded vessels carrying millions of barrels of oil staying in Venezuelan waters rather than risk seizure.

Since the first seizure, Venezuelan crude exports have fallen sharply.

While many vessels picking up oil in Venezuela are under sanctions, others transporting the country’s oil and crude from Iran and Russia have not been sanctioned, and some companies, particularly the U.S. oil company Chevron, transport Venezuelan oil in their own authorized ships.

China is the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude, which accounts for roughly 4% of its imports, with shipments in December on track to average more than 600,000 barrels per day, analysts have said.

Since the U.S. imposed energy sanctions on Venezuela in 2019, traders and refiners buying Venezuelan oil have resorted to a “shadow fleet” of tankers that disguise their location and to vessels sanctioned for transporting Iranian or Russian oil.

Trump’s pressure campaign on Maduro has included a ramped-up military presence in the region and more than two dozen military strikes on vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near Venezuela, which have killed at least 100 people.

Trump has also said that U.S. land strikes on the South American country will soon start.

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has alleged that the U.S. military build-up is aimed at overthrowing him and gaining control of the OPEC nation’s oil resources, which are the world’s largest crude reserves.