US intercepts another oil tanker off Venezuelan coast

THE US has intercepted a second tanker carrying Venezuelan crude on Saturday only days after US President Donald Trump announced a “blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.

Centuries (IMO: 9206310), a Panama-flagged VLCC owned by a Hong Kong-registered single-ship company, Centuries Shipping Limited, was not on any sanctions list at the point that US Coast Guard personnel stopped and boarded the tanker in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The tanker contained sanctioned oil from state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a post on X.

Centuries had loaded 1.8m barrels of crude oil at the Jose Terminal between December 9 and December 12 and had been signalling its destination as Malaysia at the point it was intercepted.

“It was a falsely flagged vessel operating as part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet to traffic stolen oil and fund the narcoterrorist Maduro regime,” Kelly wrote.

Centuries has been flagged by Panama since March 2021 and Lloyd’s List could find no official notification of de-registration from Panama.

The Panama register has been contacted for clarification.

Centuries has been regularly exporting Venezuelan crude to Malaysia and China over the past year, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence vessel-tracking data.

The boarding of Centuries marks the second such action against tankers carrying Venezuelan crude by the US in recent weeks amid a large US military build-up in the region.

On December 10 the Trump administration detained Skipper (IMO: 9304667), which had last called at a Venezuelan port and was described by US officials as a “stateless vessel” sanctioned for allegedly participating in “an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations”.

Skipper is expected to arrive at Galveston Offshore Lightering Area (GOLA in the Gulf of Mexico, by Monday where the tanker will transfer the 1.85m barrels cargo onto smaller tankers for transhipment into Houston.

“The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region,” US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed said in a statement posted to social media.

“We will find you, and we will stop you,” she continued.