By Idrees Ali, Jonathan Saul and Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON/LONDON, Dec 23 (Reuters) – The U.S. Coast Guard is waiting for additional forces to arrive before potentially attempting to board and seize a Venezuela-linked oil tanker it has been pursuing since Sunday, a U.S. official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The ship, which maritime groups have identified as the Bella 1, has refused to be boarded by the Coast Guard. That means that the task will likely fall to one of just two teams of specialists – known as Maritime Security Response Teams – who can board vessels under these circumstances, including by rappelling from helicopters.
The days-long pursuit highlights the mismatch between the Trump administration’s desire to seize sanctioned oil tankers near Venezuela and the limited resources of the agency that is mainly carrying out operations, the Coast Guard.
Unlike the U.S. Navy, the Coast Guard can carry out law enforcement actions, including boarding and seizing vessels that are under U.S. sanctions.
Trump earlier this month ordered a “blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, in Washington’s latest move to increase pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The Coast Guard has in recent weeks seized two oil tankers near Venezuela. After the first seizure, on Dec. 10, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi posted a 45-second video showing two helicopters approaching a vessel and armed individuals in camouflage rappelling onto it.
A Saturday social media post by the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard, showed what appeared to be Coast Guard officers aboard the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier getting ready to depart and seize the Centuries tanker, the second of the ships boarded by the U.S.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Coast Guard officials on the Ford were from a Maritime Security Response Team and at the time too far from Bella 1 to carry out a boarding operation.
“There are limited teams who are trained for these types of boardings,” said Corey Ranslem, chief executive of maritime security group Dryad Global and previously with the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment and Reuters could not determine what, if any other reasons, have led to the Coast Guard not seizing the vessel yet.
The administration could ultimately choose to not board and seize the vessel.
The White House said that the United States was still in “active pursuit of a sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion.”
LIMITED RESOURCES
The U.S. Coast Guard is a branch of the armed forces but a part of the Department of Homeland Security.
The United States has assembled a massive military force in the Caribbean, including an aircraft carrier, fighter jets and other warships. Ospreys and additional MC-130J Commando II aircraft arrived in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico in recent days, according to a separate source.
The Coast Guard has far fewer resources in place.
The service has long said that it lacks the resources to effectively carry out a growing list of missions, including search and rescue operations and drug seizures.
In November, the Coast Guard announced that it had seized about 49,000 pounds of drugs worth more than $362 million in the eastern Pacific.
“The Coast Guard is in a severe readiness crisis that is decades in the making,” Admiral Kevin Lunday, who leads the Coast Guard, told lawmakers in June.
For the fiscal year ending September 2026, the Coast Guard requested $14.6 billion in funding. It will receive an additional $25 billion through a sweeping spending and tax legislation, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
“Our Coast Guard is less ready than in any other time in the past 80 years since the end of World War Two. The downward readiness spiral we are on is not sustainable,” Lunday said earlier this year.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali, Jonathan Saul and Trevor Hunnicutt. Additional reporting by Ricardo Arduengo. Editing by Don Durfee and Shri Navaratnam)
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