U.S. Coast Guard pursuing third oil tanker off Venezuela coast, source says

The U.S. Coast Guard on Sunday was pursuing another sanctioned oil tanker in international waters, a U.S. official told CBS News, as the Trump administration appeared to be intensifying its targets of such vessels connected to the Venezuelan government.

The pursuit of the tanker, off the coast of Venezuela, is the second such operation this weekend and the third in less than a week.

The U.S. official told CBS News that Sunday's pursuit involved "a sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela's illegal sanctions evasion."

"It is flying a false flag and under a judicial seizure order," they said.

The Coast Guard's pursuit of the tanker was first reported by Reuters. The U.S. officials who spoke with Reuters did not give a specific location for the operation or the name of the vessel being pursued.

In a pre-dawn operation on Saturday, the U.S. Coast Guard seized a Panama-flagged vessel called Centuries. A U.S. official told CBS News that the interdiction of the vessel followed a similar playbook to an earlier U.S. seizure of an oil tanker near Venezuela.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said on social media that the vessel on Saturday was "a falsely flagged vessel operating as part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet to traffic stolen oil and fund the narcoterrorist Maduro regime."

In a statement on Saturday, the Venezuelan government condemned the vessel's seizure, saying it was a "serious act of piracy."

"The colonialist model that the U.S. government seeks to impose through such practices will fail and be defeated by the Venezuelan people," the statement said.

It added that "these acts will not go unpunished," and that Venezuela "will exercise all corresponding actions, including the complaint to the United Nations Security Council, other multilateral agencies and the governments of the world."

President Trump last week called for a "total and complete blockade" on all sanctioned oil tankers that enter or depart Venezuela. It is part of the ongoing pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Last week, sources told CBS News that the U.S. military also seized a sanctioned 20-year-old oil tanker that had just left port in Venezuela.

Kevin Hasset, director of the White House's National Economic Council, said Sunday on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" that the first two oil tankers seized were operating on the black market and providing oil to countries under sanctions.

"And so I don't think that people need to be worried here in the U.S. that the prices are going to go up because of these seizures of these ships," he added. "There's just a couple of them, and they were black market ships."

The targeting of tankers comes as Mr. Trump has ordered the Defense Department to carry out a series of attacks on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that his administration alleges are smuggling fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the U.S. At least 104 people have been killed in 28 known strikes since early September.