Why Did the United States Seize a Venezuelan Oil Shipment

Critical Questions by Clayton Seigle

Published December 12, 2025

On December 10, President Trump announced that U.S. forces seized Skipper, a sanctioned oil tanker transporting Venezuelan oil. The following questions examine the implications of this seizure for geopolitics and global energy security.

Q1: Why did U.S. forces seize Skipper?

A1: Skipper belongs to the so-called shadow fleet, a grouping of about 1,000 oil tankers that carry oil exports from sanctioned countries, including Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, to circumvent sanctions and price caps. Skipper had been under surveillance by U.S. regulators for years, having previously transported cargoes from Iran. Last month, Skipper reportedly used "spoofing" techniques (broadcasting false location details) to falsely project its location off Guyana, when in fact it was loading an oil cargo in Venezuela's Jose terminal. New reporting suggests the Trump administration is planning a series of similar shadow-fleet tanker seizures, which would constitute a new lever in its pressure campaign against the Maduro regime, and its effort to enforce sanctions in other, related regions like Iran.

Q2: What's the significance of this move for the Venezuela standoff?

A2: For Venezuela, the stakes are enormous. Even if this is a one-off for now, it's a warning that the United States is willing to physically halt the exports of sanctioned oil. A continuing crackdown could throttle most or all of Venezuela's exports and associated revenues, adding pressure on Maduro to step aside and opening the door to a successor regime. Tracking data indicates that 30 of the 80 tankers waiting to load Venezuelan barrels are under sanctions, offering a considerable target set for the United States. A few have already fled the area since the seizure.

Q3: Could additional seizures of Venezuelan crude shipments lift world oil prices?

A3: Not likely-Venezuela exports less than 1 million barrels per day (mb/d), a small fraction of the 106 mb/d global oil market. And according to data from Vortexa, less than 20 percent of Venezuelan crude exports are transported on shadow tankers (a smaller proportion than Russian and Iranian barrels, which utilize the same fleet). Even if Washington were to seize more Venezuelan cargoes, the volume of oil supply at risk is too small to cause a price spike-especially at a time when OPEC+ has been increasing supplies.

Q4: What are the oil market effects beyond Venezuela?

A4: The stakes are also high for Iran and Russia, both of which depend on shadow tankers to transport many of their oil shipments to international customers. In the short term, a movement of shadow tankers away from Venezuela could help Iran and China-Tehran's only oil customer-by increasing transportation capacity for their bilateral oil trade. This effect would be less pronounced for Russia and its main buyers (China and India), as demand for shadow transportation has eased as Russian oil prices have fallen below the G7 price cap.

Beyond the short term, sellers and buyers of sanctioned oil barrels will need to add the risk of physical seizures to their list of concerns, which already includes legal jeopardy, blacklisting from the U.S. dollar system, and wartime risk premiums. The seizure of Skipper comes at the same time as Ukraine has begun attacking shadow oil tankers that have transported Russian oil, part of its broader initiative to reduce Russian oil revenues that fund Moscow's war machine. Under assault from U.S. seizures and Ukrainian military strikes, the shadow fleet now faces far greater risk than before. Some fleet operations and oil trade volumes are likely to be deterred as traders and other facilitators reassess the costs and benefits of shadow-fleet oil movements.

Skipper's true location was identified using modern tanker tracking technologies and satellite imagery despite its operator's attempts to falsify its position-demonstrating that enforcement authorities can track illicit oil shipments even through the "shadows."

Q5: What are the geopolitical ramifications of increasing oil tanker seizures?

A5: Russia and China would have outsized vulnerabilities in a world of greater sanctions enforcement that may include physical seizures, and not only by the United States. Washington's seizure of Skipper could inspire other sanctioning authorities to implement similar operations, for example, in the Danish straits, through which close to half of seaborne Russian crude exports transit.

Introducing tanker seizures as a tool in Washington's toolkit will certainly raise eyebrows in China, whose imports of oil from sanctioned suppliers, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, constitute more than a quarter of its import supply chain. Beijing will see growing tanker seizure risk in the context of its strategic imperative to cushion its considerable oil import dependency by (a) maintaining a diverse portfolio of global suppliers with favorable terms and (b) continuing heavy investment to build strategic oil inventories.

Clayton Seigle is a senior fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Change Program and holds the James R. Schlesinger Chair in Energy and Geopolitics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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