US targeting oil tankers in bid to stymie global black market

The fresh approach has been seen in recent days by the Coast Guard’s pursuit of the Bella 1, a sanctioned oil tanker whose crew refused to be boarded on Sunday. The Bella 1 is the third tanker to be targeted after the U.S. took control of two other very large crude carriers, the Skipper and the Centuries.

Unlike the Skipper and the Centuries, which were full of nearly 2 million barrels of Venezuelan oil at the time the U.S. boarded them, analysts at Kpler, a shipping data and analytics provider, say the Bella 1 was likely empty when the U.S. began pursuing it. A few days after the Skipper was seized by the U.S., the Bella 1 initially made a U-turn away from Venezuela before turning back toward the country, the analysts say.

While the U.S. has previously targeted sanctioned oil, it is now increasingly focused on seizing ships that make up the so-called “ghost fleet" and serve the global black market for oil, the officials said.

Venezuela has called the U.S. actions blatant theft and an international act of piracy. It accused President Trump of seeking to seize Venezuelan oil and plunder the country’s energy resources.

Behind the hunt for tankers is a specialized group known as the Threat Finance Unit that falls under the National Security Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

“These oil seizures come out of the United States Attorney’s Office in DC because of the expertise within the Threat Finance Unit of my National Security Section and for jurisdictional reasons," said D.C.’s U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. “Under President Trump’s strong leadership, we dramatically have increased the pace and volume of these operations to make the world a safer place."

The unit has pursued similar cases for years, but its work has increased dramatically this year, officials said. Given the current resources being devoted to oil tankers, they said the group can work up the information necessary to submit a seizure warrant to the court in a matter of weeks.

With more U.S. warrants being processed, the seizures threaten to dramatically reduce the flow of Venezuelan crude. It could also cause disruptions and shortages for other countries that use the shadowy network of tankers to buy and sell oil, including Cuba, Iran, Russia and China.

Trump told reporters Monday that the U.S. planned to keep the oil and the ships. “We have a massive armada formed, the biggest we’ve ever had, and by far the biggest we’ve ever said in South America," he said.

The Coast Guard has taken the lead on the seizures so far, indicating that the actions are a law-enforcement operation rather than a military blockade. In videos posted by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, people can be seen fast-roping from helicopters onto the decks of the tankers.

“The Coast Guard has teams that are specially trained to come down and take control of vessels like this," said William Baumgartner, former judge advocate general and chief counsel for the Coast Guard. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, those teams have the right to stop, board, examine and search a ship to determine whether it is in violation of U.S. law.

If ships are “stateless," or flying a false flag of a nation, then they can be subject to U.S. jurisdiction, Baumgartner and other legal experts say.

In the case of the Skipper, which was boarded on Dec. 10, the U.S. executed a seizure warrant and is going through a legal process to keep the oil, according to administration officials. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on whether the U.S. was seeking or had secured warrants related to the Centuries and the Bella 1. Warrants often remain under seal until an action is taken. The Centuries was taken on Saturday.

The moves against tankers strike at the heart of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s grip on power by threatening oil revenue vital to the regime. About 70% of the country’s oil exports rely on a fleet of sanctioned vessels now being targeted by the U.S. government.Trump has ordered a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela, marking a major escalation in the administration’s pressure campaign against Maduro.

Write to Shelby Holliday at shelby.holliday@wsj.com, Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com