Laura Davison, Deputy Washington Bureau Chief for Bloomberg News, discusses the growing tensions between the White House and the governments of Venezuela and Iran.
The Trump administration stepped up a pressure campaign against Venezuela’s oil exports by sanctioning companies based in Hong Kong and mainland China, along with related oil tankers it accused of evading restrictions.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Wednesday added four companies with links to Venezuela’s oil industry — Zhejiang-based Corniola Ltd. and Hong Kong-based Aries Global Investment Ltd., Krape Myrtle Co and Winky International Ltd. — to its specially designated nationals and blocked persons list. It also sanctioned four vessels connected with those firms: Della, Nord Star, Rosalind and Valiant.
The US already has a list of vessels and companies under sanction for their connections to Venezuela’s oil trade. But targeting Chinese firms doing business there is rare, and could be a signal to Beijing to steer clear of the stand-off between the Trump administration and the regime of Nicolás Maduro. China is Venezuela’s biggest customer for oil exports, which represent about 95% of Venezuela’s revenue.
“These vessels, some of which are part of the shadow fleet serving Venezuela, continue to provide financial resources that fuel Maduro’s illegitimate narco-terrorist regime,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. “Maduro’s regime increasingly depends on a shadow fleet of worldwide vessels to facilitate sanctionable activity, including sanctions evasion, and to generate revenue for its destabilizing operations.”
Of the vessels identified by the Treasury Department Wednesday, only one has been anywhere close to Venezuela lately, according to ship-tracking data — the Rosalind, which typically is involved in short-haul trips known as cabotage. But it’s possible that others have traveled without sending transponder data.
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