U.S. Begins Pursuit Of Four More Russian-flagged Tankers In The Atlantic
- 9.01.2026, 15:57
The ships have left Venezuelan waters and are fleeing towards Africa and Europe.
Shadow fleet tankers fleeing Venezuela are actively trying to hide from US warships by changing their flag to the Russian one. That, however, didn't help the ship that tried to hide in Murmansk, which the Americans boarded on Wednesday.
A U.S. Navy destroyer is in pursuit of four oil tankers that left Venezuelan waters earlier this week and are now hurrying to leave across the Atlantic, heading toward Africa and Europe, The New York Times reported, citing satellite images and the words of a U.S. military official. The tankers are part of a group of 16 vessels that appear to have made a coordinated attempt to break Venezuela's naval blockade by simultaneously leaving its ports in different directions, the newspaper said. The US has so far only been able to stop one of these tankers: on Wednesday, US military personnel boarded the M Sophia in the Caribbean Sea.
One of the tankers, the Veronica, traveling empty, this week changed its name to Galileo and its flag to Russian, in an apparent attempt to escape capture by the US Navy. Three other tankers carrying Venezuelan oil and under U.S. sanctions for transporting crude from Russia and Iran have done the same, the NYT has learned from an analysis of the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping: they are registered in Sochi or Taganrog.
The simultaneous mass withdrawal of tankers from Venezuela was organized in the expectation that the United States would lack the legal authority or strength to stop them all at once, said David Tannenbaum, formerly in charge of sanctions enforcement at the U.S. Treasury Department:
"It's basically a zombie race, you just have to be faster than the ship that's following."
Changing its flag to Russian did not help the tanker Bella 1. It was initially able to prevent U.S. Coast Guard soldiers from boarding it, but after two weeks of chasing it, it was still boarded in the waters between Iceland and Scotland. While sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, the tanker under U.S. sanctions changed its name to Marinera, its registration to Russian, and its crew even painted a Russian flag on its side. Moscow sent a submarine to meet it and officially asked the US to stop pursuing it. However, using aircraft from its European air bases and backed by a British anti-submarine plane, they detained the tanker.
American military officials told the NYT that they expect more detentions of under-sanctioned vessels.
In the meantime, because of the blockade and U.S. actions, the volume of Venezuelan oil on tankers at sea has risen since the beginning of the week from 20 million to more than 29 million barrels, Bloomberg reported, citing Kpler data. That's the highest level in more than three years.
Tankers carrying Venezuelan oil are mostly piling up in Asian waters, where its main buyers, privately owned independent Chinese refineries, have been slow to accept it. Those refiners are "already preparing for the fact that the [Venezuelan] barrels that are now on their way could be the last," said Muyu Xu, a senior oil analyst at Kpler.
Average daily oil shipments from Venezuela to China last year totaled 632,000 barrels, according to TankerTrackers.com.