{"id":62071,"date":"2025-12-14T14:18:02","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T19:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=62071"},"modified":"2025-12-14T14:18:02","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T19:18:02","slug":"getting-into-the-weeds-about-the-tanker-seizure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=62071","title":{"rendered":"Getting Into The Weeds About The Tanker Seizure"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a warning that the following information is definitely in the weeds. On Saturday, Zero Hedge<\/a> posted an article about the taking of the Venezuelan tanker and the possible strategy behind it. It’s a long article. I suggest you follow the link and read the entire article. I will post some of the highlights. The taking of the tanker is another example of the ability of the Trump administration to wage economic war rather than kinetic war.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

During President Trump’s first term, there was a brief moment in which the Maduro regime appeared close to being overthrown, but it was countered by support from Cuba. According to The New York Times<\/em><\/a> reporters Michael Crowley and Edward Wong, that failure frustrated Trump, his advisers, and then Senator Rubio, who had backed regime change.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Their theory of change involves cutting off all support to Cuba<\/span>,” said Juan S. Gonzalez, who was President Joe Biden’s top White House aide for Western Hemisphere affairs. “Under this approach, once Venezuela goes, Cuba will follow<\/span>.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a separate NYT report<\/a>, journalists Anatoly Kurmanaev, Nicholas Nehamas, and Farnaz Fassihi explained that the seized tanker Skipper<\/em><\/a>, which was carrying crude contracted by Cubametales, Cuba’s state-run oil trading firm, is a critical part of how Cuba benefits from its oil trade with Venezuela.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article quotes The New York Times:<\/p>\n

Two days after its departure, Skipper offloaded a small fraction of its oil<\/span>, an estimated 50,000 barrels, to another ship, called Neptune 6, which then headed north toward Cuba, according to the shipping data firm Kpler. After the transfer, Skipper headed east, toward Asia, with the vast majority of its oil on board<\/span>, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter.<\/strong><\/p>\n

President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro of Venezuela and his predecessor, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, have for decades sent oil to Cuba at highly subsidized prices, providing a crucial resource at low cost to the impoverished island<\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In return, the Cuban government over the years has sent tens of thousands of medics, sports instructors, and, increasingly, security professionals on assignments to Venezuela<\/span>. That exchange has assumed special importance as Mr. Maduro has leaned on Cuban bodyguards and counterintelligence officers to protect himself against the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In recent years, however, only a fraction of Venezuelan oil set aside for Cuba has actually reached the island, according to PDVSA (Petr\u00f3leos<\/b> de Venezue<\/span>la<\/span>) documents and tanker tracking data. Most of the oil allocated for Cuba has instead been resold to China<\/span>, with the money providing badly needed hard currency for the Cuban government, according to multiple people close to the Venezuelan government.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

What’s likely happening is that the Trump administration is in the early innings of disrupting large volumes of crude that flow from Venezuela to Cuba to China. That strategy could trigger falling dominoes across the region, pushing Cuba’s economy deeper into collapse while also meaningfully weakening Venezuela and tipping the balance of power away from Maduro.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So far, Beijing has yet to lash out over the Skipper seizure and the resulting disruptions to crude flows to Asia. One has to wonder whether Bessent worked out a secret deal with Beijing; otherwise, this type of maneuvering by the Trump administration risks triggering turmoil that could derail any upcoming Trump-Xi talks.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a warning that the following information is definitely in the weeds. On Saturday, Zero Hedge posted an article about the taking of the Venezuelan tanker and the possible strategy behind it. It’s a long article. I suggest you … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[253,305,4703,18862,306,8976],"class_list":["post-62071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-china","tag-cuba","tag-hugo-chavez","tag-seized-tanker-skipper","tag-venezuela","tag-zero-hedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62071"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62078,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62071\/revisions\/62078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}