The US military has “seized” a third oil tanker in the Indian Ocean, weeks after it reportedly left Venezuelan waters.
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Published February 25, 2026
President Donald Trump said the United States had received “over 80 million barrels of oil” from Venezuela, hours after the Pentagon announced that the U.S. military had “seized” a third “sanctioned” oil tanker in the Indian Ocean.
“We just received over 80 million barrels of oil from our new friend and partner, Venezuela,” President Trump announced during his State of the Union address in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday night.
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“America’s oil production is increasing by more than 600,000 barrels a day,” Trump said, reiterating his promise as president to “drill, baby, drill” oil.
President Trump’s praise for the growth of the U.S. oil sector came after he sent special forces to carry out a bloody raid on Caracas and kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January. President Maduro had warned that Washington’s hostility toward his government was a pretext for the United States to seize Venezuela’s oil reserves.
The Trump administration has since promised to open up Venezuela’s oil industry to American oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips, which were among the oil companies that President Trump hosted a conference on South American oil at the White House on January 9, just days after Maduro was abducted by the United States.
President Trump’s comments came after the Pentagon announced earlier Tuesday that U.S. troops had boarded another oil tanker in the Indian Ocean connected to Venezuela.
“Three boats escaped and all three have now been captured,” the U.S. Department of Defense said in a social media post, which included video showing two helicopters pointing weapons at the boat, which was loaded with troops.
The post did not say which country the ship, known as “Bata,” came from, but said the U.S. military had tracked the tanker “from the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean.”
Samir Madani, co-founder of oil tanker monitoring website TankerTrackers.com, said Berta was one of 16 oil tankers that fled the Venezuelan coast after Maduro was abducted by U.S. forces on January 3, according to the Associated Press.
Madani told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the Bertha was carrying 1.9 million barrels of Meray 16 crude oil, a grade of Venezuelan crude.
The Bertha was flagged in the Cook Islands when it was placed under U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control website.
However, the ship was most recently listed under the false flag of Curacao in the Caribbean and was managed by a Chinese company, according to ship information system Equasis.
This latest move comes as the Trump administration continues to expand oil drilling in the United States and abroad, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
President Trump’s doubling of fossil fuel use comes as many island nations in the Caribbean seek to transition to renewable energy as they struggle to cope with tropical storms made worse by climate change.
