The U.S. seized a 20-year-old oil tanker called The Skipper off the coast of Venezuela on Wednesday, three sources familiar with the matter told CBS News, after months of heightened tensions between the Trump administration and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The seizure was initially announced by President Trump during an unrelated White House event on Wednesday. Here’s what we know about the boat and the operation:
Seizure involved special operations forces and 2 helicopters
The operation to seize the tanker began Wednesday morning, after the boat had just left port in Venezuela, according to a senior military official and a source familiar with the operation.
The mission was launched from the USS Gerald R. Ford, an aircraft carrier that has been in the area for weeks as part of a broader buildup of U.S. forces in the region, the sources told CBS News.
It involved two helicopters, special operations forces, 10 members of the U.S. Coast Guard and 10 Marines, the sources said. The boarding team was composed of the Coast Guard’s Maritime Security and Response Team, an elite maritime interdiction unit based in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Attorney General Pam Bondi posted a 45-second video of the operation on X, showing armed personnel descending onto the vessel’s deck from a helicopter. She said the U.S. executed a seizure warrant on the vessel, and that the tanker was “used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran.”
While the U.S. government — particularly the Justice Department and Homeland Security Investigations — has seized sanctioned oil tankers before, conducting a fast-rope boarding from helicopters at sea is rare, though it’s something the boarding team trains for, U.S. officials said.
The operation was led by the Coast Guard, supported by Navy forces, the officials told CBS News. Any such operation would legally require the Coast Guard to be the lead agency because the authorities used for these seizures fall under Coast Guard jurisdiction.
Tanker was sanctioned by Treasury 3 years ago
The Skipper was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2022 for its alleged role in an oil smuggling network that helped fund the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group backed by Iran.
The ship — known as Adisa in 2022 — is among the vessels controlled by sanctioned Russian oil magnate Viktor Artemov, the Treasury said in a statement. At the time, the Treasury said Artemov transported Iranian oil using an expansive network of ships that were often registered in obscure ways with the intention of skirting U.S. restrictions on Iranian petroleum exports.
The Treasury’s 2022 sanctions announcement didn’t mention Venezuela. But oil networks involving both Iran and Venezuela have been reported for years, drawing pushback from the United States. The two countries are major petroleum producers with some of the world’s largest oil reserves, but trade is restricted by heavy U.S. sanctions.
The tanker is controlled by Nigeria-based management company Thomarose Global Ventures LTD and owned by a firm linked to Artemov, according to publicly available data.
The ship is 20 years old, initially sailing under the name The Toyo in 2005. At 333 meters (about 1,092 feet) in length, it was one of the largest tankers in the world at the time it was built.
Bondi said the boat was sanctioned “due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.”
“This seizure, completed off the coast of Venezuela, was conducted safely and securely — and our investigation alongside the Department of Homeland Security to prevent the transport of sanctioned oil continues,” the attorney general said.
Venezuela’s government said in a statement that it “strongly denounces and repudiates what constitutes a shameless robbery and an act of international piracy.”
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