Foreign flag oil tanker “Bella” carrying Iranian cargo for Venezuela.
Department of Justice
WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice said Friday that federal agents seized a multimillion-dollar Iranian fuel supply for Venezuela, in what it described as the largest seizure ever.
The US, with the assistance of foreign partners, confiscated a total of 1.1 million barrels of petroleum from four foreign flag oil tankers as Tehran and Caracas sought to curb US sanctions.
According to the Justice Department, after the seizure, “the Iranian navy forcibly went on an unrelated ship in an apparent attempt to recover the seized petroleum, but was unsuccessful.”
Footage released by Central Command, the U.S. military’s fighter command overseeing the wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, shows the failed Iranian operation.
“We are seeing more and more global shipping flights preventing the Iran-Venezuela trade due to our implementation of sanctions and enforcement tasks,” State Department spokesman Morgan Ortagus wrote in a statement. “The United States remains committed to our maximum pressure campaigns against the Iranian and Maduro regimes,” she added.
In June, five Iranian oil tankers brought about 1.5 million tons to Venezuela, which was once a prominent fuel exporter. Gasoline is scarce in the South American nation due to an almost complete breakdown of the OPEC nation’s 1.3 million barrel-per-day refining network.
The two OPEC nations have previously helped each other in the face of US sanctions. In 2010-2011, Venezuela’s Venezuelan oil company, PDVSA, sent fuel to Iran, which was targeted at sanctions aimed at establishing its nuclear weapons program.
Venezuela – once the crown jewel of Latin America’s developing economy – has been hit hard in recent years.
The price of oil, the country’s largest export, has fallen more than 60% since Nicolas Maduro succeeded dictator Hugo Chavez as president of Venezuela in 2013. Earlier this year, U.S. crude prices sold short in negative territory for the first time when the coronavirus dared the prospect of global economic growth.
The fall in oil prices, coupled with a massive depression of the Venezuelan bolivar and soaring inflation have left Venezuela shuffling for cash, food, medicine and other essentials.
– Fred Imbert of CNBC contributed to this report.
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