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The Trump administration sees seizing the tankers as a way to generate cash as they seek to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry
Ben Finley & Michael BieseckerMonday 09 February 2026 20:27 GMT- Bookmark
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The U.S. military has boarded another sanctioned oil tanker, this time in the Indian Ocean after chasing the ship from the Caribbean Sea.
“When the @DeptofWar says quarantine, we mean it. Nothing will stop DoW from defending our Homeland — even in oceans halfway around the world,” the Pentagon wrote alongside video of U.S. forces boarding the ship.
“It ran, and we followed. The Department of War tracked and hunted this vessel from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean. No other nation on planet Earth has the capability to enforce its will through any domain. By land, air, or sea, our Armed Forces will find you and deliver justice. You will run out of fuel long before you will outrun us.”
The Pentagon didn’t say whether the ship was connected to Venezuela, which faces U.S. sanctions on its oil and relies on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.
The Aquila II was one of at least 16 tankers that departed the Venezuelan coast last month after U.S. forces captured President Nicolás Maduro, according to Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com. He said his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document the ship's movements.
The Dept. of War issued a warning alongside the video, saying, ‘You will run out of fuel long before you will outrun us’ (Dept. of War)According to data transmitted from the ship Monday, it is not currently laden with a cargo of crude oil.
The Aquila II is a Panamanian-flagged tanker under U.S. sanctions related to the shipment of illicit Russian oil. Owned by a company with a listed address in Hong Kong, ship tracking data shows it has spent much of the last year with its radio transponder turned off, a practice known as “running dark” commonly employed by smugglers to hide their location.
U.S. Southern Command, which oversees Latin America, said in an email that it had nothing to add to the Pentagon's post on X. The post said the military “conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction” on the ship.
The U.S. did not say it had seized the ship, which the U.S. has done previously with at least seven other sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela.
A Navy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations, confirmed the destroyers USS Pinckney and USS John Finn as well as the mobile base ship USS Miguel Keith were operating in the Indian Ocean.
In videos the Pentagon posted to social media, uniformed forces can be seen boarding a Navy helicopter that takes off from a ship that matches the profile of the Miguel Keith. Video and photos of the tanker shot from inside a helicopter also show a Navy destroyer sailing alongside the ship.
Since the U.S. ouster of Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid on Jan. 3, the Trump administration has set out to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s petroleum products.
Officials in President Donald Trump’s Republican administration have made it clear they see seizing the tankers as a way to generate cash as they seek to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry and restore its economy.
Trump also has been trying to restrict the flow of oil to Cuba, which faces strict economic sanctions by the U.S. and relies heavily on oil shipments from allies like Mexico, Russia and Venezuela.
Since the Venezuela operation, Trump has said no more Venezuelan oil will go to Cuba and that the Cuban government is ready to fall. Trump also recently signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, primarily pressuring Mexico because it has acted as an oil lifeline for Cuba.
