Officials, speaking anonymously, declined to provide a precise location for the operation or reveal the name of the vessel involved. However, the British maritime risk management group Vanguard and a US maritime security source have identified the ship as Bella 1. This crude oil carrier appears on the US Treasury Department’s sanctions list.

In 2021, Bella 1 was documented transporting Venezuelan oil to China, according to internal documents from the state-owned company PDVSA. Additionally, the vessel monitoring services reported that it had previously been used to carry Iranian crude.

Alongside this information, an almost eight-minute video was posted, featuring aerial footage that captured a helicopter hovering just above the deck of a large tanker at sea.

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An Agence France-Presse review found that Centuries does not appear on the US treasury department’s list of sanctioned companies and individuals.

Could the tanker seizures impact oil prices?

“There’s just a couple of them, and they were black market ships.”