HOUSTON — For more than a month, the Motor Tanker Skipper has bobbed about 50 miles off the coast of Galveston.
It was seized by the U.S. Coast Guard on Dec. 10 off the coast of Venezuela, accused by the United States of being part of an oil shipping network that supported groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The Skipper is now at least the seventh oil tanker seized for violatinga partial U.S. naval blockade of Venezuelan oil exports and being part of a so-called shadow fleet of vessels that work to transport sanctioned oil. On Wednesday, the Coast Guard seized the Motor Vessel Sagitta — a vessel that was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2022, according to the Associated Press.
But as the number of U.S.-seized oil tankers grows, legal questions are also mounting about the fate of the ships and their oil.
“The legal position in relation to many aspects of this is very far from clear, both in terms of national law, which will be relevant now that the ships and the oil are in U.S. territorial waters, but also international law in relation to the original seizure of the vessels,” said Martin Davies, director of the Maritime Law Center at the Tulane University Law School. “All of it is very murky, as I must say are the administration’s plans.”
The seized tankers are spread out, with at least the Skipper floating in waters off Texas, another tanker off the coast of Scotland and a third off the coast of Puerto Rico, according to social media updates from TankerTrackers.com, which tracks the movements of oil tankers.
The White House did not respond to questions about whether the Trump administration believes the U.S. now owns or controls the seized tankers or their oil, or whether it is offloading any of the crude to U.S. storage facilities or refineries.
The Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security referred POLITICO’s E&E News to the White House, which declined to comment on the tankers. The Treasury Department also declined to comment.
The quarantine is focused on sanctioned shadow vessels transporting sanctioned oil associated with Venezuela’s state-run oil company, according to a U.S. official granted anonymity to discuss government plans.
President Donald Trump’s push to capture sanctioned and shadow fleet vessels near Venezuela reflects the administration’s ongoing efforts to control Venezuela’s massive oil reserves and increase leverage over that country’s government. A U.S. military raid on Jan. 3 led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was sent to the U.S. and held on drug and weapons charges.
Trump earlier this month called for oil companies to invest at least $100 billion as part of plan to rebuild and produce more oil from Venezuela’s crumbling infrastructure. But oil executives have been hesitant to commit, citing the country’s political instability and potential legal issues down the road.
Specific details about how U.S. oil companies would work with Venezuela’s government — which is led by Delcy Rodríguez as the country’s interim president — and how the U.S. may split oil revenues with Venezuela have yet to be announced.
There are numerous questions about how the United States may use proceeds from Venezuelan oil.
But Clayton Seigle, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the oil tanker seizures are part of a continuing “maximum pressure” campaign to influence the Venezuelan government.
“Washington is completely determining whether and how much oil Venezuela can export, and to whom,” Seigle said.
International law
The Trump administration has used several legal justifications for the seizures, but with one unifying allegation: The ships violated the U.S. quarantine of Venezuelan oil.
Last Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security seized the Motor Tanker Veronica and said it was operating in defiance of Trump’s “established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean.”
The Veronica has been renamed several times, according to its registration data with the International Maritime Organization.
A tanker with its registration number was sanctioned by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in 2022. More recently it was listed as being registered in Russia and named the Gallileo before being named the Veronica and sailing under the flag of Guyana, according to the International Maritime Organization’s Global Integrated Shipping Information System.
The country of Guyana has said the vessel faked its registration in Guyana and is flying under a false flag.
If the vessel is faking its registration and not from the country it purports to represent, Davies said it is then considered stateless, and United Nations law dictates authorities from any country can board it, even if it’s not in their territorial waters.
It’s more complicated if a vessel is not considered stateless, Davies said.
A U.S. district magistrate judge in November signed a seizure warrant for the Motor Tanker Skipper under a statute that allows the seizure of all assets “foreign or domestic … of any individual, entity or organization engaged in planning or perpetrating any Federal crime of terrorism” against the United States.
Seizing a boat in that way is called interdiction, Davies said. Countries have used interdiction to seize vessels like those carrying migrants from Africa to Europe, or smuggling drugs from the Caribbean into the United States, he said.
Countries that intercept a boat in international waters under interdiction need to show that it’s a direct threat to the country, according to Davies.
“But whether that then authorizes the United States to seize the vessel on the high seas is when you sort of lose touch with international law,” Davies said. “Then, as a matter of international law, the only justification for interdiction of a foreign flag vessel on international waters is if it poses a direct threat to U.S. interests.”
The fact that several of these tankers may not have been headed for the United States raises questions about whether that argument would stand up to international scrutiny, although Davies said the Trump administration may argue that trading Venezuelan crude itself threatens the well-being of the United States.
But Kenneth Engerrand, a shareholder at the Brown Sims law firm and an adjunct professor of admiralty law at the University of Houston Law Center, said the U.S. played by the rule book in seizing the Skipper by court order.
“If the United States has a legitimate interest in that, even though I’m on the high seas, because it’s violating U.S. law, then the government has the right to get a warrant of arrest for forfeiture because it’s violating our law,” Engerrand said.
Determining what happens with the vessels and their oil now that they’ve been taken could take years to parse out, however.
‘Just step one’
It’s been 2½ years since forfeiture proceedings began on the Motor Yacht Amadea, a 348-foot luxury superyacht owned by a Russian oligarch that was seized in Fiji by the U.S. government in 2022.
Since then, it has been parked off the coast of California as the case has worked its way through the courts.
“Arresting of the vessel is just step one,” Engerrand said. “Now you go through the entire process where you determine whether there is a valid claim and whether the cargo, the vessel, whatever it is that is the subject of the arrest, can legally be sold and disposed of.”
The oil itself is likely considered a frozen asset, and it could take years for courts to determine whether it was properly seized or who has claim to it, according to Davies. But storing it and maintaining the ships could cost the government millions of dollars.
For the Amadea luxury yacht that is still the subject of court hearings, attorneys for the U.S. said last July that the government had spent $32 million transporting and maintaining the ship, according to court records.
While the U.S. waits for the seized oil tanker cases to work their way through federal courts, it could still sell the oil to U.S. refiners or onshore storage terminals, Engerrand said.
“From a procedural standpoint, the government can come in here and say, ‘This is costing us a fortune, and we want to take the oil off and sell it, we want to sell the vessel,’” Engerrand said.
If no one comes in and says they rightfully own the vessel and the oil, and no one puts up a bond for the ship and oil, then the judge could authorize a sale.
Multiple refineries and crude storage facilities — including those near Houston owned by the likes of Exxon, Chevron, Valero, Marathon Petroleum and Energy Transfer — did not respond to questions about whether they had — or would — offtake crude from any of the seized ships.
The funds from those sales would be kept within the court system, Engerrand said, and would be given to the party that is considered to have the right of ownership after all the litigation is finished.
Davies said the legal process for forfeiture is common in maritime law, but almost always for civil matters.
What the Trump administration has already done — and uncertainty about what will happen to the tankers and the oil — is different.
“There are lots of cases about forfeiture and what happens is the vessel or whatever it is, is seized and then when there’s a conviction, it’s forfeited,” Davies said. “Forfeiture without legal process — which is kind of what they’re threatening here — is just like seizing the vessels without legal process.”
