From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.
President Trump says that the United States has now seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
Since December, the US has been stopping and seizing oil tankers traveling in and out of Venezuela.
Largest one ever seized at a country.
After President Trump imposed a blockade on ships carrying sanctioned Venezuelan oil.
Ships that are part of what's known as a ghost fleet.
Oil tankers that try to secretly make their way around the world.
Four vessels are now in American custody.
Several more are being tracked.
It marks the fifth tanker the U.S. has seized.
A sixth oil tanker now.
A seventh sanctioned oil tanker.
Funding petrostates like Venezuela, Iran, and Russia.
Today my colleague, Christiane Trebert, on what these ghost fleets are exactly and how their days might be numbered.
It's Tuesday, January 27th.
Christian, welcome to The Daily.
Thank you.
So Christian?
The US has been seizing and stopping oil tankers coming in and out of Venezuela for weeks now.
And at first, this seemed like part of a pressure campaign against President Nicolas Maduro.
But then, obviously, the U.S. captured Maduro.
And I think a lot of people assumed that this effort, this pressure on the ships would stop.
But instead, it's actually not only continued, but expanded.
You are the newsroom's resident expert on these oil tankers.
You've been tracking all of this as part of our visual investigations team.
So let's start at the very beginning.
What is a ghost fleet or shadow fleet?
That's a very good question.
Besides shadow fleet and ghost fleet, there's a third term, which is dark fleet.
So it's interesting because there's not a well-defined definition.
It's basically a term for oil tankers that use deceptive practices to kind of hide that they're transporting sanctioned oil.
Oil that's sanctioned by the United States.
And these ships want to hide that they're picking up this oil and delivering this oil.
Why do I know a lot about it?
It's because that, after the full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, there was this same sudden surge in interest, like Ghost Fleet, Dark Fleet, Shadow Fleet.
And my manager asked me like, Chris, can you find out?
What are actually the ships of this fleet?
So that's how it started for me.
But there are hundreds of tankers, maybe even thousands.
We don't really know.
And basically these tankers are shipping sanctioned Russian oil or sanctioned Iranian oil and Venezuelan oil.
They're always shipping oil for either of these three countries and sometimes for all three.
Most of the oil goes to China and a significant portion goes to India as well.
And these ships have decided to do that.
There's a lot of money to make if you're shipping sanctioned oil.
And they're trying to hide that.
Got it.
OK, so do you have any sense, given the fact that this is literally called a shadow fleet, of how much of the world's oil is transported this way?
It's hard to say right, because they're obviously trying to deceive everyone that they're actually shipping this oil.
But it's probably around like 10 to 20 percent of oil tankers worldwide that have engaged in this kind of activity, which is quite a bit.
But given it's only related to Russia, Iran and Venezuela, the share of the oil on the world market is about three to nine percent, according to the data that's available.
So obviously sanctions are meant to hurt countries economically.
But what are the goals in these specific cases?
So the point of these US sanctions is to basically limit the revenue that's going to the Kremlin to fund their war effort in Ukraine, to Iran, which the US says they're using the revenue from oil to fund their activities with Hezbollah and other activities that the US doesn't like.
And the same with Venezuela.
It's propping up the Maduro government at the time.
But what we have seen is that they're successful in shipping this oil around the world and still earning significant amounts of money worldwide.
On that oil.
Basically, nobody's stopping them, even though technically there are sanctions in place.
Yes, that's exactly right.
These ships have been shipping that oil and there's not really any kind of enforcement on these ships.
So the shipments of oil just continue.
But all of that changed in December.
OK, so let's talk about what happened in December.
What specifically did we start seeing?
In December there's this very large military pressure campaign on the Maduro government in Venezuela by the US.
There's a buildup of a huge military force ahead of, of course, Maduro's capture.
But also the Trump administration said any oil tankers that want to ship Venezuelan oil that is not going to the United States, we're going to stop these vessels, board them and potentially even seize them.
And that was not just like an empty threat.
It actually started happening.
We begin with the Trump administration's dramatic escalation, with Venezuela and the Nicolas Maduro regime seizing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
We saw one tanker being stopped, another tanker being stopped.
Commandos took over another tanker, fast roping onto the deck and moving up to the bridge.
And another tanker being chased for weeks.
And this one tried to get away.
It resulted in a sort of slow motion chase.
So basically suddenly, after years of not enforcing these sanctions, the US now seems very serious about stopping these ghost fleets.
Absolutely.
And it had a very interesting effect on this very large group of hundreds, if not thousands, of tankers that are part of the Shadow Fleet.
Because we saw that other tankers were already going to Venezuela.
That kind of like turned around and we're like oh, we don't want to get boarded by a US Navy vessel.
They were spooked.
They were spooked.
And at the same time the tankers that were already in Venezuela were kind of like we probably should stay in Venezuela and probably shouldn't leave.
And then, in the beginning of January, The United States of America has successfully carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been captured and flown out of the country.
The United States enters Venezuela and captures Maduro.
And it's chaos.
And I got this call from Anatoly, our colleague in Venezuela.
And he's like, hey, Chris, I am being told that four tankers have left port.
And I'm like, OK, let me check.
And indeed on satellite imagery it was visible that these four tankers had departed Venezuelan waters and were sailing north.
But not only that.
I also realized that, besides these four tankers, there were 12 others that just disappeared.
What do you mean by disappeared?
They disappeared on satellite imagery.
They were there the day before, and the next day they were gone.
So, it seemed, all these tankers left in a coordinated effort to defy the partial blockade by the United States on Venezuelan oil exports.
And one expert I talked to said this is a zombie race.
A zombie race?
Yeah.
Right.
So when you leave altogether, in a group of 16, the odds that you're going to get caught are way smaller than when it's just one vessel leaving or two vessels leaving.
Because the United States has a huge military force build up around Venezuela.
But we saw that, you know, over the holidays for three weeks, they chase one thinker.
Imagine having to chase 16 of them.
So the odds for these tankers leaving in a coordinated effort, the odds of being captured by the United States, are way smaller.
Strength in numbers.
Strength in numbers, indeed.
Which is very striking, that you can imagine that oh, Maduro is being captured and all these ships are basically deciding amongst themselves are we going to go make a run for it or not?
And it seems a group of 16 indeed did.
So me and my colleagues were thinking, what's going on?
Where have these tankers gone and will they be able to outrun the Americans?
Which would be wild, right?
Because this is arguably the most powerful military in the world.
And are they continuing to evade these sanctions on them or will they eventually get caught?
So we set out and tried to find out.
We'll be right back.
Christiane before the break.
You described this kind of cat and mouse game that the US has been playing with these ships and this question of whether the US will ultimately be successful in enforcing its sanctions, specifically with these 16 oil tankers which, as you described, seem to have just sort of disappeared from Venezuelan waters.
You had mentioned that you and our colleagues wanted to set out to find out where they'd gone.
Tell us how you started doing that.
Yeah, so these ships engage in a lot of deceptive practices.
And because they use these deceptive techniques, it's pretty hard.
But if you know where to look, you can get some pretty good clues.
Well, how do you even know where to look?
So, for example, every oil tanker needs to send out a location signal, which is for safety.
They're very big and you know, if they don't send out a location signal and another ship doesn't see them in low visibility, for instance, it's going to be a disaster.
So...
There's an agreement.
All the bit large ships should send out this transponder signal.
But the transponder signal also allows anyone on the planet to kind of see where these ships are.
There's a website called Marine Traffic and you know you can see thousands of vessels that you can just track in real time.
But from all those 16 ships that disappeared from Venezuelan waters, we couldn't track any of them.
Why?
Because they either switched off their transponder signal, which means going dark, or they faked their location signal to pretend they're actually off the coast of West Africa or Asia, a method that's known as spoofing.
They're spoofing their location signal.
Okay, so I understand all of that, I think.
It sounds like it's VPN, but for ships, right?
Right.
But then how do you actually go about figuring out where the ships are?
So we basically just look at satellite imagery.
It shows the coast, it shows the water, and it shows ships in the sea.
And I can see there is a tanker with a red deck.
There is a larger tanker with a green deck.
And we're trying to identify which tankers they are.
Do you have satellite images on your computer to show me that we can kind of describe a little bit?
Let me, I'm going to move my seat over.
OK, so now what we're looking at is a tab on this marine traffic website that looks like a map of Venezuela, with thousands of arrows that are red or purple or green.
Tell us what these different color codings mean and what is an individual arrow?
So every arrow is a ship that's sending out a location signal.
Green means it's carrying cargo.
Purple means it's like a pleasure craft, so like a yacht or a cruise ship.
And red are tankers, and that's what we're interested in.
Okay.
And what you can see here is three vessels, right?
I see three red arrows.
Yep.
Okay.
But if we look at the satellite image, we can see that there are way more ships there.
There are way more than three oil tankers on the satellite image.
And yet, when we look at the Marine website, you're saying there are only three ships that are sending out transponder signals.
Exactly.
So all these ships that send out a legitimate signal, they're usually OK because they have nothing to hide.
They're showing the train in Venezuela and they're saying like that's for anyone to see on the world.
Anyone with an internet connection can see, hey, they're sending out the signal from Venezuela.
But I'm very interested in the ships that appear in the satellite image, but they are not sending out a signal.
So they're not visible on that website.
So then I can try to identify these ships by zooming in on the satellite image, seeing what color the deck is, how long it is, how wide it is.
And then I can check that information against a database of tankers that I've built up over the past few years together with my colleagues.
That list tankers that are in the shadow fleet by name.
But it's very tricky because they change their names not only in online registries or shipping registries, but also when you would see the ship in person.
There is a group called tankertrackerscom company that is specialized in this, and they have a photographer on shore in Venezuela that kind of like secretly takes photos of these tankers.
These photos are usually not published, but we have access to them and we can get an insight on how do these ships actually look like from the ground right.
Sometimes we try to find out which tankers they are by trying to see if there's any sailors on board, any crew members that are maybe posting a TikTok video or Instagram videos.
What are they posting about exactly?
Is it like, hi, I'm on a ship?
About their lives.
And they're like excited.
Maybe it's the first time in their lives they're in Venezuela.
They're like, hey, look where I am.
This is so pretty.
And they're showing their family members.
They're showing their fellow merchant navy crew members like where they are.
And it's a whole community online.
And you know it's interesting like the oil is sanctioned and they're engaged in what the US sees as illegal activity.
But, of course, like if this oil is being picked up in Venezuela, then brought to China and your crew member on board of the ship.
Why would you really care about US sanctions?
It feels like, if you're going to go through all this effort to obscure your name and location, you would tell the people that work on your ship.
Please don't post to TikTok.
You would think so, but it seems we as human beings just love to share things on social media.
I guess so.
What can you learn from these photos and videos then?
What is very fascinating is that we have seen ships that are obscuring their own name in very like kind of like rudimentary ways.
Like we've seen bedsheets being hung over the hull to obscure the name.
And in many instances actually, we have seen them just like completely painting over their actual name and just putting on the name name.
Not of a fake ship, but of a real ship that is kind of like the same in its appearance.
But a ship that actually, when you go to databases, you realize it's a ship that has been sent to the scrapyard.
It doesn't exist anymore.
So it's a lot of ways of obscuring the real identities.
But that makes it also kind of fascinating and fun to find out, can I find out which tanker it is?
Okay, so they're hiding where they are.
They're hiding their real names.
What else are they doing in order to operate in secret?
So they also change their flags.
So all these large vessels need to be registered in a country, and then they're flying the flag of that country.
So they can, for instance, say like, oh, we're flying the flag of Cameroon or the Marshall Islands or Panama or Guyana.
But actually, when you go to the shipping registries of these countries, it turns out that they're at times not even registered there.
So they're flying a fake flag.
And what we've seen recently a lot is ships changing their flags to Russia.
And why Russia?
Because they think it will protect them against the U.S.
Like boarding a vessel, like US is boarding vessels and saying hey, you're not flying a real flag.
But boarding a ship that actually flies an official Russian flag is a whole other thing.
It could cause a major diplomatic crisis between these two superpowers.
And that's interesting, because if that's what they're trying to do, claim Russian protection.
It hasn't worked.
Because the United States has already boarded two vessels that are flying an official Russian flag.
Just to go back to the 16 tankers that left Venezuela right after Maduro was captured, what were you able to find out about those tankers and where they went?
So, of these 16 vessels that disappeared, we found a couple that were sailing in the Caribbean Sea, but also a couple that were already far out in the Atlantic Ocean.
So we contacted the United States and said, like, are you aware of these ships?
Are you like, are they going to be stopped?
Like, what's going on?
You contacted the military.
We contacted the military.
My colleagues did.
And they said, yeah, we're tracking them and we're trying to see some of them.
And that actually happened.
At least three of the vessels that we reported on that had disappeared were indeed stopped and boarded by the United States.
But what's also very interesting to me is that some of these vessels actually seem to have made it through.
There is a group that's still sailing out there and is by now probably close to Africa.
Mm-hmm.
The zombie race worked out for them.
And there is another group of tankers that turned around and went back to Venezuela and seems to be obeying US orders right now.
And what does that mean?
It's hard to know exactly what's happening, but after Maduro was captured, the US basically started directing where Venezuela's oil is allowed to go and where these thinkers can ship it.
And they are shipping Venezuelan oil now to storage sites in the Caribbean, hoping to sell that Venezuelan oil on the global world markets, but under the US directive.
So what you kind of see is that some of these shadow fleet vessels are now working for what the US wants.
I'm still kind of struck by the fact that these ships are going through all of this effort to evade the authorities, which seems to have worked.
Except here you are Christiane.
You have been able to track so many of them.
So I sort of wonder if you've been able to track so many of them through TikTok or other means.
Satellite images.
Why has this been able to go on for so long?
So these sanctions come from the U.S.
Treasury Department, but they're not usually the enforcer of these sanctions, right?
We see that now.
These ships are not being stopped by a ship from the U.S.
Treasury Department.
They're being stopped by the U.S.
Navy or the U.S.
Coast Guard.
And a lot of it relied on kind of like self-regulation, meaning like you're, let's say, an oil trader or a shipper or whatever.
You probably don't want to touch that Iranian oil because if you do you may get in trouble with US authorities.
And that means like the next time you get a job in like picking up oil in the US and bringing it somewhere you're probably not going to get that job because you touched Iranian oil in the past.
But there's also something else that's been going on and has been allowed to go on, and that's to do with insurance.
Insurance.
Insurance, absolutely.
Because you can imagine if an accident happens with one of these big ships laden with oil and it hits something in a port and there's a huge oil spill.
That's going to cost billions and billions of dollars.
So all these ships need to have insurance in many ports in the world.
Doesn't matter whether it's Houston or whether it's a port in Iran or a port in China.
These ports will say like, hey, do you have legitimate insurance?
Because, you know, if something happens, we want to make sure that someone pays for the cleanup.
So, OK, I understand why you might want an insurance company to insure your boat full of oil.
But if you are in a legally operating boat full of oil, how do you get insurance?
I mean, there are not that many insurers in the world that can take this on.
And most of these insurance companies are based in Western countries.
So what has been happening is that many of the shadow fleet oil tankers are lying to these insurers when they ask for insurance.
But what has happened recently, maybe partly because of the reporting we did on that, and also just in general and in scrutiny on these ships, these American and Western insurance companies are yanking insurance away from these ships.
So now these ships are getting insurance from less reputable companies, or sometimes even companies that may not really exist, that are often linked to Russia, which is also pretty scary right.
Because, let's say, something happens with one of these Shadow Fleet tankers, who the hell is going to pay for it?
Do you have any sense, Christiane, as to how this pressure campaign on the Shadow Fleet might end?
So one striking thing that has happened after Trump met with European leaders at Davos is that Macron tweeted and said hey we, as France, also stopped and boarded a tanker that was carrying Russian-sanctioned oil.
So that's a striking spillover effect of Trump's gumbo diplomacy, where at least a one-time ally France, is now doing the same thing as the US is doing, which is stopping and boarding these Shadow Fleet tankers.
But also, what I'm looking at right now is at a completely different side of the world, but very much linked, and that's Iran.
President Donald Trump is ramping up pressure on Iran.
Yeah, he says big force is heading to the region as the country continues to kill protesters in the streets.
On Thursday night, Trump said that he's moving an armada of military vessels towards the region.
And the next day, on Friday, The Trump administration is issuing new sanctions on Iran's shadow fleet of oil vessels, as the president sends Iran a stern warning.
The US Treasury Department announced a new set of sanctions specifically targeting oil tankers, because the US wants to put more pressure on Iran, given their crackdown on the anti-government protests.
So...
What I find very interesting is that, when we remember how this started in Venezuela, where you had the US military building up its forces around Venezuela and the US threatening and then stopping and boarding tankers linked to Venezuela's oil trade, we see something similar happening with Iran right now.
The U.S. is moving its military vessels there.
We see that actually happening on satellite imagery.
And the question is now are we going to see something similar happening regarding Iran as what we saw happening in Venezuela?
Ghost fleets does, in fact, expand.
I wonder how much that threatens not just ghost fleets but threatens a disruption of the global oil market generally.
I mean, you could imagine, maybe that's one of the reasons why sanctions have not been super well enforced before.
Totally.
You know, Iran and Russia are reliant on their income that they have from exporting their oil.
And there may be less shippers willing to transport their oil.
And that means that it will be harder for them, for Iran and for Russia, to get their oil out.
And it will get more expensive to get that oil.
And, as I said before, like China and also India, are the biggest buyers of this Iranian and Russian oil in most instances, and will be more expensive for China to buy this oil.
But just to focus on the US for a second.
Do we have any sense of how any of that could affect oil prices here domestically?
Like, what would change in the United States?
The global oil market doesn't like when there is uncertainty.
So each time a ship is getting seized, there's a small uptick in the price of oil.
But it kind of like washes out over time.
And what we hear Trump saying is that, you know, this is...
The reason why the United States is doing what it's doing in Venezuela.
A major reason is the oil, if not the primary reason, right.
So the idea behind that from the Trump administration seems to be we want to get oil prices down for the United States.
But the question is whether that will indeed happen.
Okay, and beyond the impact that this all might have on the global oil market, what about the broader geopolitical impacts of enforcing these sanctions, seizing these oil tankers?
Could the countries that the U.S. is targeting retaliate in some meaningful way?
Well, I'm very curious, what is the reaction going to be of Iran and Russia?
Because so far they haven't done much except sending out written statements.
It's not that they sent their own navy to retaliate by seizing oil tankers of the West.
But as pressure increases on them, and if their cash flow even is more reduced because of these actions by the United States and now also by France, are they feeling they have to take action to kind of get their oil moving around the world?
Like, how are they going to generate income?
Because they will need that money to continue to be in power.
And if the U.S. and now also allies of the U.S. are stopping these vessels, what's going to happen?
So the question of how these governments are going to survive is the main question on my mind moving forward.
Christian, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having me.
We'll be right back.
Here's what else you need to know today.
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Today's episode was produced by Shannon Lin, Diana Nguyen, Olivia Nat Claire Tennis-Getter and Michael Simon-Johnson.
It was edited by Maria Byrne, Patricia Willans, and Paige Cowett.
It contains music by Marion Lozano, Diane Wong, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood.
That's it for The Daily.
I'm Rachel Abrams.
See you tomorrow.
