[ZERO] Fresh reporting in Reuters has tracked at least five supertankers which have changed course on Monday after initially heading to Venezuela to load crude oil, following this month's US naval seizure of a Venezuelan tanker.
Among these was a Russian tanker transporting crude for Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA, along with at least four other supertankers en route to Venezuelan ports. They made u-turns on fears of facing US military interdiction.
This also comes after last Friday Bloomberg and others reported that Washington was preparing to carry out further seizures of sanction-linked oil tankers off Venezuela's coast.
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yvan Gil condemned these moves and threats as piracy, calling it an "illegal and aggressive act of sabotage."
Officially at least, the Trump-ordered military build-up in the southern Caribbean is all about disrupting and dismantling drug trafficking operations. But many analysts see the real motivator is ease of access to major underground oil reserves.
This has meant that Venezuela’s oil exports are effectively paralyzed, with the exception of Chevron's shipments which are operating under US authorization.
Meanwhile, those earlier telegraphed Trump-authorized CIA covert ops appear to be well underway, given new reports of a major cyber attack on Venezuela's national oil company.
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