US piracy cripples Venezuela's oil industry as ports 'pile up' with tankers: Report

Washington recently intensified its regime-change efforts against Venezuela, illegally shutting down the country's airspace and imposing a naval blockade that seeks to starve a population of over 30 million people  

News Desk  -  The Cradle 

Washington's illegal blockade of Venezuela and its theft of oil tankers in Caribbean waters have “paralyzed” the country’s oil industry, according to several reports in western media, with millions of barrels of oil stuck at its ports.

“Venezuela’s ports are piling up with tankers filled with oil, as officials fear releasing them into international waters and into the cross hairs of the United States. Tankers bound for Venezuela have turned around midway, shipping data shows,” the New York Times (NYT) reported on 23 December.

According to data from the monitoring service TankerTrackers.com cited by Reuters, an increasing number of loaded tankers remain stuck at Venezuela's ports, with some forced to return days after setting sail in fear of marauding US vessels.

“More than a dozen loaded vessels are in Venezuela waiting for new directions from their owners after the US seized the supertanker Skipper earlier this month and targeted two additional vessels on the weekend,” the British news outlet reported on Tuesday.

According to reports, state oil company PDVSA has started filling tankers with crude and fuel oil and anchoring them in Venezuelan waters due to a rapidly filling backlog of onshore tanks. Venezuela's daily crude production is approximately 1.1 million barrels.

“We’re going to keep it. Maybe we’ll sell it, maybe we’ll keep it, maybe we’ll use it in the strategic reserve. We’re keeping the ships also,” US President Donald Trump told reporters in Florida on Monday, after unveiling a new class of battleships named after himself.

As of 24 December, Washington has seized two oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela. US naval forces remain in pursuit of a third tanker, the Bella 1, which refused capture and remains in international waters.

After the initial seizure of the Skipper tanker on 10 December, Caracas began dispatching naval vessels to accompany some tankers.

“The government is considering going further and putting armed soldiers on tankers bound for China, the main importer of Venezuelan oil. Such a move would complicate the US Coast Guard’s attempts to interdict them, but it could also draw Mr. Maduro into a military conflict against an armada of US Navy warships,” NYT reports.

Per international law, the US has no legal standing to enforce unilateral coercive sanctions in international waters or extraterritorially.

As Washington's regime-change attempts against Venezuela continue to intensify, the UN Security Council convened on Tuesday for an emergency session called by Caracas to condemn the illegal seizures.

“[The White House] acts outside of international law, demanding that Venezuelans vacate our country and hand it over. This is the greatest extortion known in our history,” Venezuela's envoy to the UN, Samuel Moncada, said.

“The masks have come off. It is not drugs [that the US is after], it is not security, it is not freedom. It is oil, it is mines, and it is land,” he stressed.

Moncada also warned other Latin American nations that US ambitions are “continental,” highlighting that Venezuela is “only the first target of a larger plan.”

"The US government wants us to be divided so it can conquer us piece by piece,” he added.

Russia's envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, strongly condemned the blockade of Venezuela and Washington's “cowboy behavior.”

“Washington’s responsibility for the catastrophic consequences of such cowboy behavior for the residents of the blockaded country is also obvious. Unfortunately, there is every reason to believe that the US actions against Venezuela are not a one-off. This unfolding intervention could become a template for future military actions against Latin American states,” Nebenzia noted.

China, which receives the majority of Venezuela's daily oil exports, sharply criticized Washington's measures, cautioning that they are “threatening peace.”

Beijing's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Sun Lei, accused the US of violating international norms, stressing that Washington's actions “seriously infringe upon other countries' sovereignty, security and legitimate rising interests, gravely violate the UN Charter and international law, and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

“As an independent sovereign state, Venezuela has the right to independently develop mutually beneficial cooperation with other countries and defend its legitimate rights and interests, which should be respected and supported by the international community,” Sun added.

According to a recent YouGov poll in the US, only a fraction of respondents support the blockade of Venezuela.