The United States has seized a tanker that was previously summoned from a port in Venezuela on Friday. The ship is now on its way back to Venezuela. Here the oil will be sold through a US energy agreement. This is what US President Donald Trump writes on the social media Truth Social.
- Today, the United States, together with the acting authorities in Venezuela, seized a tanker that departed from Venezuela without our permission.
- This tanker is now on its way back to Venezuela, and the oil will be sold through the fantastic energy agreement that we have established for this type of sale, writes the US president.
Earlier on Friday, an unnamed US official told Reuters that the US was in the process of seizing the ship "Olina" in the Caribbean Sea. This is apparently the ship Trump is writing about.
The ship "Olina" sailed from Venezuela last week with a cargo of oil as part of a flotilla, shortly after the US had captured Nicolas Maduro - the now ousted Venezuelan president.
The US imposed sanctions on the ship in January last year when it was named "Minerva M". The reason was that it was transporting Russian oil.
The US government accused it of being part of the Russian shadow fleet, which consists of ships with inadequate insurance contracts that circumvent sanctions and try to avoid government inspections. "Olina" sails under the flag of East Timor, according to the public ship database Equasis.
The US military invaded Venezuela on Saturday last week and took the country's president and his wife prisoner and flew them out of the country. They have since been remanded in custody in New York, where they are charged with, among other things, narco-terrorism, and Venezuela's vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, has been installed as acting president.
Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves, but extracts less than one percent of the oil produced worldwide. Trump wants to change that by getting American oil companies to extract oil and invest in Venezuela's oil industry.
/ritzau/
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