US military boards third oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. military forces boarded a third sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea in an effort to target illicit oil connected to Venezuela, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

An organization that tracks ship movements said the vessel was the only tanker left to pursue after more than a dozen fled the coast of Venezuela following the capture of the South American country’s authoritarian then-president, Nicolás Maduro.

U.S. Southern Command said in a post on X that U.S. forces boarded the Bertha overnight, conducting “a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding.”

“The vessel was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean and attempted to evade,” the post said. “From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, we tracked it and stopped it.”

Video posted by the Pentagon shows U.S. military helicopters 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 flagged to the Cook Islands and is under U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the website of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

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.

Ben Finley, The Associated Press