US Military Intervenes: Strategic Oil Tanker Boarding in Indian Ocean After Caribbean Pursuit

WASHINGTON – The U.S. military has successfully intercepted a third oil tanker in the Indian Ocean, following its journey from the Caribbean Sea. This operation is part of ongoing efforts to disrupt the illicit oil trade linked to Venezuela, the Pentagon announced on Tuesday.

The U.S. Southern Command revealed on social media platform X that U.S. forces carried out an overnight boarding of the tanker named Bertha. This action was described as a “right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding.”

The post elaborated, “The vessel was acting in defiance of the quarantine on sanctioned ships in the Caribbean, put in place by former President Trump. Despite its attempts to evade detection, we successfully tracked and halted it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean.”

In recent years, Venezuela has been subject to U.S. sanctions on its oil industry, forcing it to use a covert network of misleadingly flagged tankers to distribute crude oil globally. In December, President Donald Trump imposed a quarantine on these sanctioned tankers as a strategy to exert pressure on Venezuela’s then-leader Nicolás Maduro, who was subsequently captured in January during a U.S. military operation.

The Bertha, which is registered under the Cook Islands flag, is listed under U.S. sanctions due to its connections to Iran, as per the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Video posted by the Pentagon shows U.S. military helicopters flying toward the tanker.

Trump’s Republican administration has been seizing tankers as part of its broader efforts to take control of Venezuela’s oil. The Pentagon’s post did not state whether the Bertha was formally seized and placed under U.S. control.

Maduro was brought to the U.S. to face charges of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. and has pleaded not guilty.