The US had boarded one other oil tanker within the Indian Ocean final week, after monitoring it from the Caribbean Sea.
US forces board vessel within the INDOPACOM space of duty.
The US army has introduced its forces have boarded yet one more santioned oil tanker, the Bertha. Below the jurisdiction of the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), forces performed an in a single day “right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding” of the vessel.
The Division of Conflict mentioned the Bertha was “working in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels within the Caribbean”. It wrote on X: “From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, we tracked it and stopped it. No different nation has the worldwide attain, endurance, or will to implement sanctions at this distance. Worldwide waters will not be a refuge for sanctioned actors. By land, air, or sea, our forces will discover you and ship justice. The Division of Conflict will deny illicit actors and their proxies freedom of maneuver within the maritime area.”
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Three boats ran and now all three have been captured.
In a single day, U.S. forces performed a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding of the Bertha with out incident within the INDOPACOM space of duty. The vessel was working in defiance of President Trump’s… pic.twitter.com/YoHlb9v54p
— Division of Conflict ???????????? (@DeptofWar) February 24, 2026
At the very least eight oil tankers have been seized by the US since final yr, amid the president’s plan to crack down on the availability of Venezuelan oil.
In December, Trump ordered a “blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers getting into and leaving the South American nation. This brought about its oil exports to drop sharply as solely ships related to Chevron and certain for the US might function as regular.
Specialists mentioned in January that loadings had fallen by round 50% to 400,000 barrels per day.
The most recent interception comes only one week after the US army boarded the Panamanian-flagged Veronica III within the Indian Ocean over suspicions it was serving to Venezuela keep away from the sanctions.
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The Pentagon additionally known as this a “a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding”, however didn’t say whether or not the ship had been seized and prevented from carrying on its journey.
It mentioned: “The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine – hoping to slide away. We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the space, and shut it down.”
The Veronica III left Venezuela on January 3 – the identical day President Nicholas Maduro was captured by US forces.
It was carrying 1.9 million barrels of crude oil and is believed to have been transporting Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan oil since 2023, monitoring group TankerTrackers mentioned.
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