U.S. military forces boarded the sanctioned tanker Aquila II in the Indian Ocean after tracking the ship from the Caribbean Sea, the Pentagon said Monday, as part of an oil quarantine targeting Venezuela. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the boarding followed a tracking operation that began as the ship moved from Venezuela’s region and then into the Indian Ocean.
Hegseth tied the action to a broader effort by the Trump administration to prevent sanctioned Venezuelan oil from flowing into global supply chains, saying U.S. forces boarded the tanker after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea. He also said that, after the administration’s earlier raid related to President Nicolás Maduro, he had directed commanders that “none of those are getting away,” adding, “I don’t care if we got to go around the globe to get them; we’re going to get them.”
The Pentagon said in a post on X that the operation involved a “right-of-visit, maritime interdiction” on the Aquila II. In that statement, the Pentagon said the tanker had been operating in defiance of Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean and that “It ran, and we followed.”
The U.S. military said it was holding the Aquila II while deciding its ultimate fate. A defense official said the tanker has not been formally seized and placed under U.S. control, and that decision-making on what happens next was ongoing. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the process.
Aquila II is a Panamanian-flagged tanker under U.S. sanctions tied to shipments of illicit Russian oil, the report said. Ship tracking data described by the Associated Press indicated the vessel spent much of the previous year with its radio transponder turned off, a practice known as “running dark,” which smugglers use to hide their location. The report also said the tanker was among at least 16 tankers that fled Venezuela’s coast last month.
Tracking information transmitted from the ship on Monday indicated, according to the report, that the Aquila II was not currently laden with crude oil. The report also cited Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, who said the company used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document the ship’s movements.
In addition to the tanker boarding, the U.S. military carried out another strike on Monday against a vessel accused of drug trafficking in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Southern Command said the strike killed two people and left one survivor, and said it had notified the U.S. Coast Guard to activate its search and rescue system for the survivor. The report said a video linked to the post showed a boat moving through the water before exploding in flames.
The report said Monday’s attack raised the death toll from the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats to 130 people. It described the administration’s wider campaign since the raid that ousted Maduro in early January, saying officials have set out to control Venezuela’s production, refining and global distribution of petroleum products.
The Associated Press report also cited the administration’s efforts to restrict Venezuelan oil from reaching Cuba, which relies heavily on oil shipments and faces strict U.S. sanctions. It said Trump has said no more Venezuelan oil will go to Cuba and said Cuba’s government is ready to fall, and that Trump recently signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, primarily pressuring Mexico.