US military boards sanctioned tanker Veronica III in Indian Ocean

US military forces boarded another sanctioned tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea, the Pentagon said on Sunday.

Venezuela has faced US oil sanctions for several years and has relied on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to move crude into global markets. In December, President Donald Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned vessels to increase pressure on then-President Nicolás Maduro before he was apprehended in a US military operation in January.

The Defence Department identified the ship as Veronica III, a Panama-flagged tanker under U.S. sanctions tied to Iran and Venezuela, and said American forces conducted what it described as a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding operation. The action took place overnight and was completed without incident.

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In a post on X, the Pentagon said the vessel had attempted to evade enforcement of a quarantine of sanctioned tankers ordered by President Donald Trump. “The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine — hoping to slip away. We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down,” the department said.

The boarding underscores the U.S. commitment to curtail what officials call a shadow fleet of ships that have been used to move Venezuelan crude into global supply chains despite sanctions. Venezuela has been subject to U.S. oil sanctions for several years, and tankers linked to its exports often operate under false flags or complex ownership structures in attempts to bypass restrictions.

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The Pentagon did not immediately disclose whether the Veronica III was formally seized or what its ultimate fate would be. Last week, U.S. forces also boarded a different detained tanker, the Aquila II, in the Indian Ocean, in a similar enforcement operation against vessels connected to oil sanctioned amid the broader pressure campaign on Venezuela’s oil sector.

Video posted by the Pentagon shows U.S. troops boarding the tanker.

The Veronica III is a Panamanian-flagged vessel under U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the website of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The Veronica III left Venezuela on Jan. 3, the same day as Maduro’s capture, with nearly 2 million barrels of crude and fuel oil, TankerTrackers.com posted Sunday on X.

“Since 2023, she’s been involved with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil,” the organization said.

Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, told The Associated Press in January that his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document that at least 16 tankers left the Venezuelan coast in contravention of the quarantine.

The Trump administration has been seizing tankers as part of its broader efforts to take control of the Venezuela’s oil. The Pentagon did not say in the post whether the Veronica III was formally seized and placed under U.S. control, and later told the AP in an email that it had no additional information to provide beyond that post.

Last week, the U.S. military boarded a different tanker in the Indian Ocean, the Aquila II. The ship was being held while its ultimate fate was decided by the United States, according to a defence official who spoke last week on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing decision-making.

With inputs from agencies