Donald Trump says land strikes on Venezuela drug shipments coming soon

Donald Trump says the US will soon begin strikes to intercept narcotics shipments making their way from Venezuela to the United States via land routes.

Mr Trump has repeatedly threatened to begin strikes on narcotics being smuggled overland in recent weeks.

He told reporters at the White House on Thursday, local time, "it's going to be starting on land pretty soon".

Previously, six sources familiar with the matter said the United States was preparing to intercept more ships carrying Venezuelan oil, following the seizure of a tanker this week.

The seizure was the first interdiction of an oil cargo tanker from Venezuela, which has been under US sanctions since 2019. 

In a bid to increase pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the US has built a large-scale military presence in the southern Caribbean and issued new sanctions.

The latest US action has put shipowners, operators and maritime agencies involved in transporting Venezuelan crude oil on alert, with many reconsidering whether to sail from Venezuelan waters, shipping sources say.

Further direct interventions by the US are expected in the coming weeks, targeting ships carrying Venezuelan oil that may also have transported oil from other countries targeted by US sanctions, such as Iran, according to sources who declined to be named.

In a statement, the US Treasury Department said it had imposed sanctions on six shipping companies moving Venezuelan oil, as well as six crude oil tankers it said had "engaged in deceptive and unsafe shipping practices and continue to provide financial resources that fuel Maduro's corrupt narco-terrorist regime".

Four of the tankers, including the 2002-built H. Constance and the 2003-built Lattafa, are registered in Panama, with the other two flagged by the Cook Islands and Hong Kong.

The targeted vessels are supertankers that recently loaded crude in Venezuela, according to state oil company PDVSA's internal shipping documents.

'Powerful intimidation tactic'

Franqui Flores and Efrain Antonio Campo Flores, nephews of Mr Maduro's wife Cilia Flores, were also hit with sanctions.

The two were arrested in Haiti in 2015 in a US Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation.

They were convicted in the US in 2016 on charges that they tried to carry out a multi-million-dollar cocaine deal and sentenced to 18 years in prison, but were released in a 2022 prison swap with Venezuela.

The Venezuelan communications ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr Maduro and his government have vehemently denied links to crime.

David Goldwyn, a former energy diplomat at the US State Department, said the sanctions on the six vessels could lay the groundwork for the US to try to seize them.

"This is a powerful intimidation tactic," he said.

"Certainly, any sanctioned vessel owner will think twice about lifting Venezuelan crude for fear of losing the vessel entirely.

"And those that are not sanctioned will certainly be concerned about being boarded."

US assembles 'tanker target list'

Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA did not reply to a request for comment, but the government said the US seizure constituted a "theft".

Asked whether the Trump administration planned further ship seizures, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said she would not speak about future actions but said the US would continue to implement the president's sanctions policies.

"We're not going to stand by and watch sanctioned vessels sail the seas with black-market oil, the proceeds of which will fuel narcoterrorism of rogue and illegitimate regimes around the world," she said.

The US has assembled a target list of several more sanctioned tankers for possible seizure, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

The US Justice Department and Homeland Security had been planning the seizures for months, according to two of the people.

A reduction or halt in Venezuelan oil exports, the main generator of revenue for the Venezuelan government, would strain the Maduro government's finances.

The US Treasury said it had imposed sanctions on six supertankers that, according to PDVSA's internal documents and ship monitoring data, recently loaded crude oil in Venezuela, and on four Venezuelans, including three relatives of the country's first lady, Cilia Flores. 

It was not known whether the newly sanctioned ships were among those now targeted for interception.

Wednesday's seizure came after the US had carried out more than 20 strikes against boats in the Caribbean and Pacific over the past few months, killing more than 80 people. 

Legal and human rights experts say the strikes may be illegal extrajudicial attacks, while the US claims it is protecting Americans from drug cartels it has branded as terrorist organisations.

Further ship seizures could be aimed at tightening the financial screws on Mr Maduro, according to a source briefed on US Venezuela policy.

Mr Maduro has alleged that the US military build-up is aimed at overthrowing him and gaining control of the OPEC nation's oil resources.

The new US tactic focuses on the activities of what is called the shadow fleet of tankers that transports sanctioned oil to China, the largest buyer of crude from Venezuela and Iran. 

A single vessel will often make separate runs on behalf of Iran, Venezuela and Russia, the sources added.

The seizure of the tanker, called Skipper, caused at least one shipping company to temporarily suspend the voyages of three freshly loaded shipments totalling almost 6 million barrels of Venezuela's flagship export-grade crude oil, sources said.

"The cargoes were just loaded and were about to start sailing to Asia," a trading executive involved in dealing and shipping Venezuelan oil said. 

"Now the voyages are cancelled, and tankers are waiting off the Venezuelan coast as it's safer to do that."

Surveillance of the seas

US forces were monitoring tankers at sea and some vessels in Venezuelan ports, either being repaired or loaded, and are waiting for them to sail into international waters before taking action, one of the sources said.

In the lead-up to the seizure of Skipper, which was previously sanctioned for its oil trading with Iran, US forces had stepped up surveillance of waters close to Venezuela and neighbouring Guyana, another of the sources said.

At the White House, Ms Leavitt said the seized vessel was expected to sail to a US port, where the government intends to seize its cargo of oil through a formal legal process.

The timing of further seizures would partly depend on how quickly arrangements could be made for ports to receive seized ships for unloading oil cargoes, one of the sources said. 

Another vessel, the Seahorse, which is under UK and European Union sanctions for its oil trading links with Russia, was monitored in November by a US warship and briefly detained before sailing into Venezuela, one of the sources said.

While the Venezuelan government described the US seizure as "an act of international piracy," legal specialists said it did not fall under such a definition under international law.

Laurence Atkin-Teillet, a specialist on piracy and the law of the sea at Britain's Nottingham Law School, said that because the capture was endorsed and sanctioned by the US, it cannot be considered piracy.

"The term piracy in this context appears to be rhetorical or figurative, rather than a legal usage," he said.

Reuters