U.S. military forces have boarded a third sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean, tracking it from the Caribbean Sea in a bid to target illicit oil connected to Venezuela, the Pentagon announced on Tuesday.
A maritime tracking organization indicated this vessel was the sole remaining tanker to pursue after more than a dozen others fled the Venezuelan coast following the capture of authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro.
U.S. Southern Command confirmed via a post on X that its forces boarded the Bertha overnight, executing a "right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding" operation.
This marks the tenth oil tanker interdiction by the Trump administration since the practice began in early December, and notably, the third vessel seized in the Indian Ocean rather than the Caribbean or North Atlantic.
“The vessel was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean and attempted to evade,” Southern Command's post said. “From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, we tracked it and stopped it.”
A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss an ongoing operation noted that like the previous two boardings conducted in the Indian Ocean, the Bertha was not formally seized but rather placed under U.S. control. The official said that the Bertha's fate will be determined by agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.
Video posted by the Pentagon shows U.S. Navy military helicopters taking off from an identified ship and flying toward the tanker.
Venezuela had faced U.S. sanctions on its oil for several years, relying on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains. President Donald Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned tankers in December to pressure Maduro before he was apprehended in January during an American military operation.
The Bertha is a vessel that was flagged to the Cook Islands when it was placed under U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the website of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. However, the vessel was more recently listed under a false flag of the Caribbean island of Curacao and managed by a company in China, according to Equasis, a shipping information system.
Following Maduro's capture, at least 16 tankers fled the Venezuelan coast, according to Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, who said his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document the ships' movements.
The Bertha was the only tanker left to pursue from the original 16, TankerTrackers.com said in a Feb. 15 post on X. Madani said in a message to The Associated Press on Tuesday that the Bertha was laden with 1.9 million barrels of crude oil.
Over the past few years, the ship has received Iranian crude from other vessels via hoses for deliveries to China, Madani said.
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. The Pentagon said in an email that it didn't have more to add beyond Southern Command's post on X.
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.
Iran orders death penalty for regime protesters despite Trump promise to protect them
US ambassador to France defuses diplomatic squabble with Paris over killing of student
Trump reveals SOTU guests as Democrats invite Epstein survivors and ICE detainees
Texas official urges hold on Camp Mystic license after deadly flood
AI report goes viral after warning the importance of human intelligence will ‘unwind’
