Sanctioned Oil Tankers Leave Venezuela in Defiance of US Blockade

• Disguise true locations, turn off transmission signals

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

At least 16 oil tankers hit by U.S. sanctions have made an attempt to evade a major American naval blockade on Venezuela’s energy exports over the last few days, in part by disguising their true locations or turning off their transmission signals.

For weeks, the ships had been spotted on satellite imagery docked in Venezuelan ports, according to an analysis by The New York Times. But by Saturday, in the wake of President Nicolás Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces, all were gone from those locations, the NYT report added.

Four have been tracked by satellite sailing east 30 miles from shore, using fake ship names and misrepresenting their positions, a deceptive tactic known as “spoofing.” These four have left port without the interim government’s authorisation, according to internal communications from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company and two people in the Venezuelan oil industry, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. The departures could be seen as an early act of defiance of interim President Delcy Rodríguez’s control.

The other 12 are not broadcasting any signals and have not been located in new imagery, it said.

President Donald Trump unilaterally imposed a “complete blockade” on sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers on December 16, an effort that Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday was one of the largest “quarantines” in modern history, and was successfully “paralysing” the regime’s ability to generate revenue. The blockade has notably exempted oil shipped by American company Chevron to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

So far, U.S. forces have confronted three tankers trying to trade Venezuelan oil. One, called Skipper, was halted and seized by the Coast Guard on December 10, on its way to China. A second, the Centuries, was halted and boarded, but not seized, on December 20, and a third, then called the Bella 1, now Marinera, is still being pursued by U.S. forces.

In response to questions from The Times, a U.S. official said that “the quarantine is in effect focusing on sanctioned shadow vessels transporting sanctioned” Venezuelan oil.

The tankers’ evasion strategies as part of this latest exodus appear to be relying on deception, but also saturation. At least three of the ships were in proximity as they left Venezuelan waters in the same direction, suggesting at least some coordination.

“The only real way for oil-laden tankers to break through a naval blockade is to overwhelm it with outbound vessels,” said Samir Madani, the co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, a website that monitors shipping and identified several of the vessels in satellite imagery.

The location and intent of the 12 tankers that have stopped broadcasting signals and left port since Saturday are open questions. But Venezuela is under pressure to move its crude. Since the blockade, storage facilities have been nearing capacity, and shutting down production risks damaging oil reservoirs and infrastructure.

The ships that have left without authorisation were contracted by the oil traders Alex Saab and Ramón Carretero, according to internal data for the state-owned oil company, and to the two oil-industry sources. Both of the traders are under U.S. sanctions for being business partners of Maduro’s family. Mr. Saab was jailed in the United States in 2021, but was traded in 2023 by the Biden administration for Americans detained in Venezuela.

Fifteen of the 16 ships that were on the move on Saturday were under U.S. sanctions for hauling Iranian and Russian oil.

They would “have to make a decision about what is less risky — to flee while they may see a chance to escape or stay and risk future boardings or incursions by U.S. forces in Venezuelan waters,” said David Tannenbaum, a former sanctions compliance officer at the U.S. Treasury.

The techniques used to skirt the sanctions are part of a modern-day arsenal of deception used by a loose-knit group of illicit tankers known as “the ghost fleet.” They include broadcasting and painting on the hull the names of vessels that have been decommissioned, and spoofing their locations to appear elsewhere.

The Aquila II, laden with crude, sent out a signal identifying itself as the Cape Balder and spoofed its coordinates to appear in the Baltic Sea. The Bertha used the alias Ekta and indicated it was in Nigeria. The Veronica III assumed the name DS Vector and similarly pretended to be positioned off the coast of Nigeria.

By Sunday, a ship called the Vesna, using the fake name Priya, was already hundreds of miles out from Venezuela. It was spotted on a satellite image by TankerTrackers.com, and verified by The Times, heading northeast in the Atlantic Ocean, about 25 miles west of Grenada. Unlike the other three ships tracked in the imagery, it did not appear to be carrying crude, allowing it to travel faster.