U.S. to Designate Venezuelan Government as Terror Group, Blockade Sanctioned Oil Tankers

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday vowed to designate Venezuela’s government a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO) and ordered a “total and complete” blockade of sanctioned oil tankers moving into and out of the country.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed Venezuela was “completely surrounded” by “the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” and said the action was in response to alleged “terrorism, drug smuggling, and human trafficking,” as well as what he described as the “theft of our Assets.”

Trump said the blockade would expand and remain in place until Venezuela “return[s] to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”

The FTO designation, should it be made through the U.S. State Department, would explicitly bar U.S. citizens from knowingly providing “material support or resources” to Venezuela’s government.

In an interview with CNBC, Bob McNally of Rapidan Energy Group said that oil market disruption would be limited if U.S. enforcement of the blockade is limited to sanctioned tankers.

“We estimate that sanctioned (only) tankers would threaten about 0.3 million barrels of Venezuela’s roughly 0.9 million barrels a day of total crude exports,” McNally told the news outlet.

The seizure last week by U.S. forces of an oil tanker in Venezuelan waters has resulted in diminished traffic in the country’s ports, The Wall Street Journal reported. One notable exception: Chevron has continued to send oil tankers to the U.S. Gulf Coast despite rising tensions between the Washington and Caracas.