A U.S. Navy vessel is pursuing several sanctioned oil tankers that appear to be making a break across the Atlantic Ocean after leaving Venezuelan waters earlier this week, according to satellite imagery and a U.S. military official. The ships, most of them laden with oil, are hundreds of miles from land and appear to be heading east, toward Africa and Europe.
The U.S. began a partial naval blockade of Venezuelan oil shipments in mid-December and has since boarded or seized four vessels trying to trade oil in defiance of the effort. On Wednesday, U.S. forces intercepted and took control of two of these ships, including one seized between Iceland and Britain after a weekslong chase across the North Atlantic.
The ships now crossing the Atlantic are among a larger group of sanctioned tankers that made an apparently coordinated attempt to evade the blockade last weekend, departing Venezuelan waters en masse. Of the 16 vessels involved, only one, the M Sophia, was boarded by U.S. forces, in the Caribbean on Wednesday.
Of the remaining 15 tankers, four were spotted heading east in the Atlantic Ocean, at least 400 miles from land. A second group of five vessels was detected sailing northeast through the Caribbean on Monday. The same day, a U.S. Navy destroyer was also pictured steaming toward the tankers heading across the Atlantic. One tanker reappeared off the coast of Colombia, according to TankerTrackers.com, a company that tracks global oil shipments. The positions of the remaining five ships are unknown.
The ships were detected by a computer program written by Ollie Ballinger, a lecturer in geocomputation at University College London’s Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis. The Times also analyzed the imagery, and verified Mr. Ballinger’s findings.
One of the tankers, the Veronica, which is not carrying any oil, changed its name to Galileo and its flag to Russia this week in an apparent effort to evade a U.S. boarding attempt. The Times identified three other tankers, all carrying Venezuelan oil, that registered in Russia this week.
The ship seized on Wednesday in the North Atlantic had also recently changed names and re-registered with Russia. It had been sanctioned by the United States as part of its measures taken against Iran.
The mass departure was a calculated bet intended to overwhelm U.S. enforcement, said David Tannenbaum, a former sanctions compliance officer with the U.S. Treasury. “All of these vessels fleeing at once is a gamble that U.S. forces don’t have the legal power or capability to stop them all at once,” he said. “It’s essentially a zombie race, you just have to be faster than the next boat.”
U.S. military officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said they expect more boardings of sanctioned vessels.
The final destinations of these ships are unclear, and some are broadcasting false location information by pretending to be other ships around the world.
Christiaan Triebert is a Times reporter working on the Visual Investigations team, a group that combines traditional reporting with digital sleuthing and analysis of visual evidence to verify and source facts from around the world.
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