America Just Seized a Foreign Oil Tanker and Said the Quiet Part Out Loud

by Bruce Fanger

 

White Rose 

December 10, 2025

The United States has crossed a line today that most Americans will not even hear about unless someone forces them to look. Before sunrise, American forces boarded a massive Venezuelan oil tanker in international waters, took control of the vessel, and placed both ship and cargo under United States authority. The tanker, identified in multiple reports as the Skipper, was loaded with approximately two million barrels of heavy crude. Boarding teams fast-roped from helicopters launched off the USS Gerald R. Ford. The crew did not resist. The ship was taken.

 

Then President Donald Trump told the world what comes next.

According to Reuters, he said this directly:

 

“We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, large tanker, very large, largest one ever, actually.”

 

He was then asked what would happen to the oil. His answer was not careful. It was not diplomatic. It was not the language of sanctions enforcement or maritime law. It was blunt.

 

“We keep it, I guess.”

 

Those are his exact words. Verified. Reported consistently. Not contested by the White House. No ambiguity. No context missing. The President of the United States said that America will keep another country’s oil.

 

The official rationale from Attorney General Pam Bondi is that the vessel was involved in a sanctioned network that handles oil traded between Venezuela, Iran and Cuba. But Trump himself did not speak in the language of legal procedure. He spoke in the language of entitlement. He treated the seizure as a moment of triumph, not as a difficult enforcement action. He framed it like a prize.

 

This matters because under the rules of the sea, foreign flagged commercial ships in international waters are not American property. They are not to be boarded without consent except under extremely narrow circumstances. Yet here we are. A carrier strike group in the Caribbean. A tanker taken in open water. A president gloating about the size of the prize and openly suggesting the United States will keep the crude for itself.

 

Venezuela has called it piracy. Cuba has called it theft. Those accusations no longer sound like propaganda when the American president goes on record saying exactly what they are accusing the United States of doing.

 

This is also happening alongside a pattern of lethal American strikes on small boats in the region. These strikes have been sold to the public as anti narcotics operations. Experts across the political spectrum point out that Venezuela is not a fentanyl source and only minimally involved in cocaine flows to the United States. Yet the narcotics story is being used as the catchall explanation for everything from missile strikes to maritime seizures.

 

Congress has not voted on any use of force in Venezuelan waters. There has been no debate. There has been no attempt to define what mission the United States is carrying out in the Caribbean. Power is being exercised first and justified later. The President is testing how far he can go without public pushback. So far the answer appears to be very far.

 

Will the American public notice any of this

No. Not unless someone points directly at the facts and refuses to let them be buried.

 

The United States just used a nuclear carrier group to seize a foreign nation’s oil on the high seas.

The President then confirmed the seizure and said the United States is keeping the oil.

These are documented facts.

These are verified quotes.

And they expose a truth that most Americans have been trained not to see.

 

When force is easy and accountability is optional, the distinction between enforcement and plunder collapses. Today we watched that collapse in real time. Most people will scroll past it. Most media will soft pedal it. But anyone still awake can see exactly what happened.

 

A country that once insisted it did not fight for oil just took oil and said so.