The $8 billion black market for Venezuelan oil is suddenly closing down

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Venezuela has long used the same playbook as Russia and Iran to get around crippling American sanctions on its oil industry, tapping a shadowy fleet of aging vessels to carry crude to customers. President Trump’s partial oil blockade threatens to devastate this black market, which U.S.

officials say lines Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s pockets and props up the impoverished country’s fragile economy. U.S. officials said the military would be going after a network of ships already sanctioned by the Treasury Department.

Such tankers account for about 70% of Venezuela’s oil exports, mostly sent to Asian buyers who pay in cryptocurrencies, Venezuelan economist Asdrúbal Oliveros said on the country’s public radio Wednesday. Losing access to that network of ships would reduce Venezuelan revenue by some $8 billion a year, Oliveros estimated. Some sanctioned tankers have already turned around to avoid the U.S.

Navy flotilla in the Caribbean, which has already seized one vessel last week. At least one tanker has left Venezuela since that ship, the Skipper, was confiscated, but it was carrying fuel oil, not the more valuable crude. About 75 tankers are loitering in Venezuelan waters, and half are on Treasury’s blacklist for sanctions violators, according to TankerTrackers.com.

About two dozen are typically used to export crude oil. The “blockade"—the word Trump used—is better called a quarantine, U.S. officials said, since legal tankers will still have free passage to Venezuela, and a real blockade is considered an act of war under international law.

But it still marks the most extraordinary use of U.S. military might to enforce oil sanctions against Venezuela. The hard truth for Venezuela is