Donald Trump orders ‘total and complete’ blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering Venezuela

US President Donald Trump has announced a “total and complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers, confirming that Venezuela is now “surrounded” by an armada of US warships and cut off from a key supply.

“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Mr Trump said on Tuesday night in a Truth Social post.

Mr Trump’s escalation comes after US forces last week seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast, an unusual move that followed a build-up of military forces in the region. In Tuesday night’s Truth post, Mr Trump alleged Venezuela was using oil to fund drug trafficking and other crimes and vowed to continue the military build-up until the country gave the US oil, land and assets, though it was not clear why he felt the US had a claim.

Mr Trump’s post said the blockade would “only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”

Pentagon officials referred all questions about the post to the White House.

The build-up has been accompanied by a series of military strikes on boats in international waters in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The campaign, which has drawn bipartisan scrutiny among US lawmakers, has killed at least 95 people in 25 known strikes on vessels.

The Trump administration has defended it as a success, saying it has prevented drugs from reaching American shores, and they pushed back on concerns that it is stretching the bounds of lawful warfare.

The Trump administration has said the campaign is about stopping drugs headed to the US, but Mr Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles appeared to confirm in a Vanity Fair interview published Tuesday that the campaign is part of a push to oust Maduro.

Ms Wiles said Mr Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle.”

Tuesday night’s announcement seemed to have a similar aim.

“For the theft of our Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking, the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” his lengthy post read.

“America will not allow Criminals, Terrorists, or other Countries, to rob, threaten, or harm our Nation and, likewise, will not allow a Hostile Regime to take our Oil, Land, or any other Assets, all of which must be returned to the United States, IMMEDIATELY.”

Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about 1 million barrels a day, has long relied on oil revenue as a lifeblood of its economy.

Since the Trump administration began imposing oil sanctions on Venezuela in 2017, Mr Maduro’s government has relied on a shadowy fleet of unflagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.

The state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., commonly known as PDVSA, has been locked out of global oil markets by US sanctions. It sells most of its exports at a steep discount in the black market in China.

Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan oil expert at Rice University in Houston, said about 850,000 barrels of the 1 million daily production is exported. Of that, he said, 80 per cent goes to China, 15 per cent to 17 per cent goes to the US through Chevron Corp., and the remainder goes to Cuba.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the US planned to enact what Mr Trump called a “TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela.”

But the US Navy has 11 ships, including an aircraft carrier and several amphibious assault ships, in the region.

Those ships carry a wide complement of aircraft, including helicopters and V-22 Ospreys. Additionally, the Navy has been operating a handful of P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft in the region.

All told, those assets provide the military a significant ability to monitor marine traffic coming in and out of the country.