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U.S. military forces boarded a third sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea, the Pentagon said Tuesday, as part of an effort to disrupt illicit crude shipments linked to Venezuela.
The Pentagon said U.S. forces boarded the vessel Bertha overnight. U.S. Southern Command posted on X that the operation involved “a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding,” adding that, “From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, we tracked it and stopped it.”
The boarding came as U.S. authorities continued targeting tankers tied to Venezuela’s oil trade under a quarantine ordered by President Donald Trump in December. The Pentagon said the Bertha interdiction was the 10th oil-tanker interdiction carried out by the Trump administration since it began targeting Venezuela-linked vessels in early December, with the other interdictions carried out in the Caribbean or North Atlantic.
The Pentagon said the Bertha case followed a broader pattern in which the United States sought to interdict sanctioned shipments after tracking vessels believed to be part of an illicit network. According to the Associated Press, Venezuela has faced U.S. sanctions on its oil for several years and has relied on a shadow fleet of tankers using false flags, which authorities say allows crude to enter global supply chains.
A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing operation, said the Bertha was not formally seized but instead placed under U.S. control. The official said the vessel’s fate would be determined by the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.
The Associated Press reported that video posted by the Pentagon showed U.S. Navy helicopters taking off from an identified ship and flying toward the tanker. The Pentagon said in an email that it had nothing to add beyond Southern Command’s X post.
Shipping-tracking organizations and U.S. sanctions records described the Bertha as having links to multiple jurisdictions and identifiers. The Associated Press reported that the vessel was flagged to the Cook Islands when it was placed under U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control website. More recently, the ship was listed under a false flag of the Caribbean island of Curacao and managed by a company in China, according to Equasis, a shipping information system.
After Maduro was apprehended in early January during a U.S. military operation, TankerTrackers.com co-founder Samir Madani told the Associated Press that at least 16 tankers fled the coast of Venezuela. Madani said in a Feb. 15 post on X that the Bertha was the only tanker left to pursue from the original 16.
Madani also said the Bertha was laden with 1.9 million barrels of Merey 16 crude, according to a message he sent to the Associated Press on Tuesday. Madani said the over past few years the ship received Iranian crude from other vessels via hoses for deliveries to China.
Maduro is in the United States to face charges that include working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the country. The Associated Press reported that Maduro has pleaded not guilty.