MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
U.S. forces boarded an oil tanker they had been pursuing for nearly two weeks across the Atlantic.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Yeah. During the chase, the tanker changed its name and even began flying a Russian flag. All of this comes as the Trump administration begins releasing new details about their plans for Venezuela's oil industry.
MARTIN: NPR's Greg Myre has the details. Good morning, Greg.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Michel.
MARTIN: So this boat was somewhere between Britain and Iceland. How did it get there?
MYRE: It was quite the adventure. U.S. ships in the Caribbean have been targeting sanctioned oil tankers, these ghost ships, for the past month. They homed in on one in late December. It was called the Bella 1 and believed to be heading to Venezuela to pick up oil. But the Bella 1 refused to halt. Instead, it changed course and headed out to the Atlantic with U.S. forces in pursuit. Now, somewhere along the way, the Bella 1 changed its name. The crew simply painted a new name on the hull. It became the Marinera, and it also changed flags. It lowered the flag of Guyana and used the flag of Russia.
MARTIN: Did that make any difference to the U.S. forces chasing it?
MYRE: No. This nautical makeover did not deter the Americans. They caught up with the Marinera in the North Atlantic, between Britain and Iceland, as you noted, several thousand miles from where this chase began. The U.S. forces boarded the tanker, which, along with the crew, is now headed to the U.S. So it's been a pretty dramatic week for the U.S. operations related to Venezuela, but many critics are still asking if there's a real plan for the road ahead. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded and said the U.S. does have a strategy to stabilize Venezuela. One component is the U.S. taking control of up to 50 million barrels of oil from Venezuela.
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MARCO RUBIO: We're going to sell it in the marketplace at market rates, not at the discounts Venezuela was getting. That money will then be handled in such a way that we will control how it is disbursed in a way that benefits the Venezuelan people.
MYRE: So the current price of oil is relatively low, but that amount that he's talking about could work out to somewhere between 2 and $3 billion.
MARTIN: I'm wondering about the reaction to the U.S. seizing a tanker with a Russian flag. Has that, in any way, sort of increasing tensions with Moscow?
MYRE: Well, the Russians certainly are not happy about this, but so far, the response has been pretty measured. The transportation ministry says it gave this ship temporary permission to fly the Russian flag back on December 24. It added that, quote, "freedom of navigation rules operate in the open sea, and no government has the right to use force against ships." Russia didn't say why it granted this permission. Perhaps it thought it might deter the U.S. from seizing the ship. Russia is an ally of Venezuela but didn't really do anything to prevent this recent U.S. campaign. So maybe this seemed like some sort of low-cost way to assist Venezuela.
MARTIN: So as the Trump administration talks about its plans for Venezuela, the focus seems to be increasingly on the oil industry. So what else can you tell us about this?
MYRE: Yeah. Trump gave a long interview to The New York Times last night and said U.S. oversight of Venezuela could last for years, and a lot of this focused on running the country's oil industry. It also looks like Energy Secretary Chris Wright will be playing a key role. He told an energy conference in Florida yesterday that the U.S. will be controlling the sales of Venezuela's oil industry indefinitely. So it looks like this multipronged approach, much of it related to the country's oil industry.
MARTIN: That's NPR's Greg Myre. Greg, thank you.
MYRE: Sure thing, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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