World’s biggest oil reserve holder faces US chokehold as Trump targets Venezuela’s shadow tanker fleet
President Donald Trump’s new blockade on Venezuela’s sanctioned oil tankers takes square aim at a country that controls the world’s largest crude reserves.
At more than 300 billion estimated barrels — roughly 20% of the world’s total and nearly four times U.S. reserves — Venezuela controls the largest oil stockpile on the planet.
The move is a direct shot at Venezuela’s economic crown jewel: its oil sector.
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Venezuela, roughly twice the size of California, sits atop extraordinary oil wealth.
Yet its crisis-stricken economy and persistent political instability have sharply limited its ability to convert those reserves into sustained production. A similar dynamic has played out in countries like Iran and Libya, where political turmoil, economic crises and deteriorating infrastructure also constrain output despite vast resource wealth.
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Venezuela’s stockpile, now larger than those of energy titans like Saudi Arabia, has become a central flashpoint in the geopolitical struggle surrounding the country’s future.
On Tuesday, Trump ordered a “total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers” bound for or departing Venezuela.
The announcement came on the heels of a high-profile Dec. 10 U.S. seizure of a nondescript oil tanker that quietly ferried Venezuelan crude in defiance of sanctions. That vessel is just one of a shadowy fleet of roughly 1,000 tankers that move sanctioned oil around the world.
These so-called “ghost ships” sail under ever-changing flags, repeatedly change names, shift ownership through shell companies, disable transponders to evade tracking and conduct mid-sea transfers to mask their cargo.
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“Venezuela under President Maduro and under his predecessor have wrecked Venezuela’s economy,” explained Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at The Heritage Foundation.
She said the country’s communist system has hollowed out its industrial base.
“That’s why Maduro relies almost entirely on oil, it’s the only profitable source of revenue for him,” she added.
Benjamin Jensen, who heads the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Trump’s proposed blockade zeroes in on the economic pillar of President Nicolas Maduro’s regime.
“Venezuela is wholly dependent on oil,” explained Jensen. “Anything you do that puts pressure on their ability to bypass sanctions and trade in oil is a direct threat to the economy and by extension the regime,” he added.
How the blockade will be enforced remains unclear. Even so, Washington has already sent thousands of troops and nearly a dozen warships, including an aircraft carrier, to the region.
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