This goes to show the lengths the US Navy is willing to go to enforce the quarantine of sanctioned tankers.
Just think about it: the Caribbean Sea and the Indian Ocean stand at a distance of 12,000–15,000 nautical miles from each other, the equivalent of approximately 13,800–17,300 statute miles (land miles).
It´s a world away.
But that was exactly the distance that the US forces tracked a sanctioned oil tanker.
Today, US military forces announced that they had boarded another sanctioned tanker fleeing a quarantine of sanctioned tankers ordered by President Donald J. Trump.
Associated Press reported:
“Several tankers fled the Venezuelan coast in the wake of the raid, including the ship that was boarded in the Indian Ocean overnight. The Defense Department said in a post on X that U.S. forces boarded the Veronica III, conducting ‘a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding’.
‘The vessel tried to defy President Trump’s quarantine — hoping to slip away’, the Pentagon said. ‘We tracked it from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, closed the distance, and shut it down’.”
— Department of War 🇺🇸 (@DeptofWar) February 15, 2026
“The Veronica III left Venezuela on Jan. 3, the same day as Maduro’s capture, with nearly 2 million barrels of crude and fuel oil, TankerTrackers.com posted Sunday on X.
‘Since 2023, she’s been involved with Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil’, the organization said.”
It’s unclear, so far, if the Veronica III has been formally seized and placed under U.S. control.
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