What is on that tanker

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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“We do not know the status of these sailors and seafarers, who are Russian nationals,” Wiese Bockmann told Fox News Digital. “That lack of clarity is common with dark fleet tankers.”…

She also suggested NATO and the Nordic-Baltic 8+ group of governments have been “worried” about sanctioned oil tankers with unauthorized personnel onboard, including “armed guards.”

“Increasingly, and I know the Nordic Baltic 8+ governments are worried about the fact that you are having unauthorized people also on board, also known as armed guards,” Wiese Bockmann said. "But it is highly irregular.

“Armed guards are rarely seen and typically used on ships that are transiting the Gulf of Aden or the Red Sea and are therefore assessed as at risk from attack by Houthis or pirates,” she added.

DB2

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Sanctioned tankers are now travelling through the English Channel unopposed. I’m convinced that the Marinera was carrying gold and silver to Russia for safe keeping, although how safe it would have been there I’m not too sure.

Two sanctioned Russian tankers sailed through the English Channel on Thursday, a day after a similar vessel was seized by the US in European waters.

Tavian, an 800ft oil tanker, was spotted sailing about 20 miles north of Guernsey, making its way towards Finland, on Thursday morning. Under the name Tia, it had been sanctioned by the US in 2024 for allegedly being involved in the distribution of illicit Russian oil.

It was followed into the Channel by a second vessel, the 600ft Aria, which was sanctioned by the US in January last year, having been suspected of supplying oil to aid Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.

The move by the USA on Venezuela seems to have disrupted a major money laundering route into the Western banking system. It would also appear to have disrupted the growth of Hezbollah on the USA’s doorstep.

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The problem with that scenario is that the Bella never got to Venezuela to pick up any cargo.

U.S. Coast Guard Pursues Oil Tanker Linked to Venezuela
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/us/politics/us-coast-guard-venezuela-oil-tankers.html
The tanker, called the Bella 1, was en route to pick up oil in Venezuela and was not carrying cargo, according to one of the officials and ship-tracking data, and fled northeast into the Atlantic Ocean…

The Bella 1 picked up oil from Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal, in August, the analysis shows. The tanker then transferred its cargo to another tanker off the coast of Oman before making its way to the Caribbean, where it was intercepted.

DB2

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It did not have to dock to get the ‘goodies’ on board. Foolish to do so.

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IF there was something clandestine on board, it could have been picked up at one of the previous ports of call, or during a ship to ship transfer. Reports suggest the Bella had transferred cargo ship to ship in the open sea.

That’s one possibility.

Other reports say that the “value” of a ship that is “seized, taken, impounded” exceeds all the profits from multiple “shadow deliveries”. This, all by itself, causes real problems for insurance, permits, etc.
Legal problems for the captain n crew add complexity and resistance to accepting “shadow” cargo.

This hurts Russia economically.

IMO, the following is the KISS reason.
Biden implemented “sanctions”, then did not prosecute those sanctions, cause lots of countries needed time to find alternative sources of oil n gas, and build infrastructure.
Now, most countries have accomplished that.

The BRICS countries thumbed their noses and skirted the sanctions.
And supported Russia in continuing its assault on Ukraine.

Seizing the ships enforces the sanctions .
Sanctions were intended to choke Russia’s ability to execute its "special military operation ".

DJT has said “stop the war n sign a peace treaty”.
Enforcing the sanctions pushes that agenda

The Bella was reportedly in the Caribbean, flying no flag. It fled, still no flag, and only put up a Russian flag later.

It had therefore provided a “reason” for officials to be suspicious, AND, didn’t have a country patron cover.
Apparently that made it fair game under international maritime law, to be stopped and boarded.

That IMO, again, is the KISS explanation.

The BRICS countries are complaining… N I don’t care.

:face_with_peeking_eye:
ralph

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I’m not a blockade expert. But it would seem that if you’re trying to blockade a country from selling its oil, you would seize a sanctioned tanker full of oil…like the numerous loaded tankers that left Venezuela after the US captured Maduro.

If the strategy is that “We tried to board the tanker and couldn’t, then we’re gonna chase it down to the ends of the earth until we catch it”, welp, that’s not very good strategy in my opinion. Unloaded tankers are faster and harder to catch. The numerous loaded tankers that left Venezuela would have been easier to catch, and seizing them would have been more impactful to limiting Venezuela’s ability to sell sanctioned oil.

Side note - This strategy also reeks of a “saving face” approach. Kinda like us capturing Maduro because he was dancing…yeah, that’s right - TFG captured Maduro because he thought he was making fun of his dance moves!

The problem with a KISS explanation is that it assumes intelligent people are making decisions.

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Maybe this will help: Gift Link from the WSJ:

https://www.wsj.com/business/logistics/a-shadow-fleet-smuggles-illicit-oil-across-the-high-seas-this-is-how-it-works-eb8c9954?st=o7c8Jq&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

A Shadow Fleet Smuggles Illicit Oil Across the High Seas. This Is How It Works.

Russia, Iran and Venezuela have amassed an armada of aging tankers to move barrels around the world

Two sanctioned oil tankers shut off their transponders earlier this month and powered to a meetup point, drawing alongside each other in the Sea of Japan.

The crew of one of the vessels, known as the Kapitan Kostichev, then emptied 700,000 barrels of Russian crude into the tanks of the other, the Jun Tong, according to ship-tracking service Kpler.

The clandestine ship-to-ship transfer, visible via satellite and other shipping data, is a maneuver typical of the shadow fleet, an armada of aging tankers that crisscross the world, smuggling illicit oil for sanctioned nations including Venezuela, Russia and Iran.

The fleet’s operations came into sharp focus this week when U.S. Special Forces dropped from helicopters onto the deck of the Russia-flagged Marinera in the Atlantic Ocean south of Iceland. The tanker, which days before was sailing under a false flagand going by the name Bella 1, was escaping Trump administration action against vessels carrying Venezuelan oil. It had a Russian naval escort and wasn’t carrying any oil when it was captured Wednesday.

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The USA has intercepted another tanker, but this is the bit that I found interesting:

Delcy Rodríguez, the interim president and Mr Maduro’s former right-hand woman, said on Wednesday that no foreign power would govern the country but Mr Trump insisted the country was cooperating fully.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a briefing that day that the US had “maximum leverage” on the interim government, whose decisions would “continue to be dictated by the United States”.

Trump administration officials have said that Washington will control the beleaguered South American country’s oil sales “indefinitely” to stabilise the economy and ensure it acts within US interests.

https://archive.is/0rl3P

Looks like Venezuela is being treated as a colony of the USA. Given the way things have been run there this may not be a bad thing for both economies, for a while anyway. Anyone know how this will work? Presumably US based energy companies will be involved.

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Pay to play? as that seems to be the SOP across the board for the administration

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No, I don’t think anyone “knows” but I’ve seen some speculation. Albaby, among others as noted that oil prices are already low, and it takes lots of time and lots of money to set up refineries to handle the kind of sour crude that Venezuela has so much of. It seems unlikely that they will risk the untold billions to set up more refining without some kinds of assurances that it will be worth it long term, which who will guarantee?

(We do have some refineries capable of handling the stuff along the Gulf coast, but they’re already busy, no?)

And ramping up production will only depress oil prices further, so there’s a reason the oil giants might not be eager to do so, given that the cost of production (& refining) is getting closer and closer to the profit line.

But Trump (correctly, I think) believes that low oil prices will stimulate the economy and get us out of the inflation/stagnation mode we’re on the threshold of, so he will be willing to do extraordinary things to make it happen. Can he guarantee tens of billions from Uncle Sugar to the oil companies? Dunno. That’s what it might take.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/business/energy-environment/trump-venezuela-oil-executives.html

Trump’s $100 Billion Venezuela Oil Plan Gets a Cool Reception

President Trump met with oil and gas executives on Friday in an effort to push them to invest money in Venezuela, a plan many of them are reluctant to embrace.

The question of how much money oil companies may spend in Venezuela will come down to how those investments are defined. Simply maintaining Venezuela’s oil output at current levels, around one million barrels per day, would cost more than $50 billion over the next 15 years, according to estimates from the consulting firm Rystad Energy.

But nobody is talking about very large sums yet. After Mr. Trump promised the $100 billion in investments by Big Oil, two people close to the companies attending Friday’s meeting cautioned that they were not aware of any such commitment by the businesses.

There was (reportedly) significant pushback at the meeting (see article), but I’m sure Donny will get some measure of what he wants, because he’s already brought the possibility of the Import-Export bank into the discussion, and he closed the meeting with “ If we make a deal, you will be there a long time. If we don’t make a deal, you won’t be there at all,”

Spoken like a true Godfather.

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Assumably. But…you know what happens when people assume.

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Per Exxon CEO - it won’t work.

Exxon’s chief executive Darren Woods said: “We have had our assets seized there twice and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we’ve historically seen and what is currently the state.”

“Today it’s uninvestable.”

I don’t see how this be be overcome short of boots on the ground with a long-term security guarantee coupled with a decade or so of free and fair elections.

The risk premium for that oil - at today’s oil prices - is massively cost prohibitive. We probably would have to pay the oil companies to do it.

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It’s a conundrum for them. It makes no sense at all for them to invest in Venezuela. But Trump wants them to invest in Venezuela. And it’s bad for business to deny Trump what he wants in the moment. Because he knows no check on his wrath when he is snubbed.

I think the smart play is to tap-tap-tap Trump along. You say you’ll invest 100 gazillion dollars in Venezuela, so he can get some credit/self-satisfaction. You send in assessment workers to get a sense of what’s there as soon as it’s safe to do that (but see below), so there’s something happening there quickly….

….and then just take your time. Trump’s a “declare victory and move on” kind of guy with a limited attention span. Remember Gaza? How Gaza was going to receive a bajillion dollars worth of investment? But as soon as he was able to give the announcement speech about how he had fixed Gaza, and the process turned to the hard work of implementing the details, he completely lost focus. On to Venezuela! And next to Greenland!

So if you say you’re going to play along, you get included in everything. And then just go super-slow, and wait for the next shiny thing to come onto the horizon (or for the Democrats to win the House in the midterm and for Trump to be preoccupied with that.

But here’s the thing - it’s not going to be easy for Trump to get to even the first stage, where oil majors feel comfortable that there are adequate security arrangements in place for even their initial teams to move around the country safely. Oh, sure - while a big chunk of the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic and Caribbean resources are right offshore, the Venezuelan government won’t be playing shenanigans. But that’s not going to last indefinitely.

The only long-term solution to actual large scale investment is a wholesale reworking of the Venezuelan governmental and legal systems, root and branch. And that’s not in the cards. Trump seems to think that he can cut a deal with the existing regime that the oil companies will be happy with and that the regime will honor (“Why don’t we just put aside all that silly Bolivarian carp and just make some serious money!”), but I don’t think that’s likely to play out…

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You’ve identified the strategy of practically everyone who has to deal with Donald and his big feelings. You pretend that you are listening to his ridiculous words, you nod your head and act as if you agree, and exit as soon as possible. Perhaps make an announcement or two. Donald loves press announcements. But that’s about it. You move on in your world of adults, and leave Donald to “executive time”- watching Fox News and shaking his fist at clouds.

By the way, this strategy also works on small children.

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First off, oil, and energy in general, isn’t as large a factor in the economy as it was in the 70s. So while lower oil prices will add some stimulation of the economy, it won’t be a particularly large amount of stimulation. Second, what exactly do you define as inflation/stagnation? To me, it would be in inflation outpaces growth, and as far as I understand the recent numbers, we aren’t anywhere close to that point. The GDP growth numbers are reported after inflation is accounted for (that was the error I originally had in my old debt spreadsheet that I fixed after we discussed it here). And thirdly, Trump doesn’t believe in anything other than what he thinks may be good for Trump, so if the next person he meets convinces him that higher oil prices are good for him, then he will lean toward policies that lead to higher oil prices.

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