Name: US carrying out operation to seize Venezuela-linked oil tanker in Atlantic, official say | BBC News
Uploaded: 2026-01-07T17:06:07.000Z
Duration: 2 min 2 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

On in the last few moments we've been hearing reports that the United States is attempting to seize a Venezuela linked oil tanker after a more than two week long pursuit across the Atlantic.

Basic passive voice

The vessel was last seen in waters between Iceland and the UK and has been accused of breaking US sanctions and shipping Iranian oil.

Defence correspondent Jonathan Beale has been following the story.

Well, it looks like an attempt to seize that tanker is ongoing.

We think it's somewhere between the UK and Iceland.

It has been tracked for a long time across the Atlantic.

Now the US Coast Guard first tries to board this tanker when it was in the Caribbean Sea, believed to be going towards Venezuela at the time.

That did not succeed and it's possible it needed US Special Forces involved because of the complexities of the operation.

coast Guard have tracked that tanker, it's been renamed during that transit across the Atlantic when it did a U turn.

It's also been reflagged as a Russian vessel and Russia has said it is concerned about the US attempts to board it.

But that boarding operation looks like it's happening and there are some images already appearing on social media which seem to suggest they're using helicopters, special forces helicopters to board that vessel.

We don't know the success of that operation at the moment.

It is a complex operation, difficult conditions in the North Atlantic.

But we do know that over the past few days the US has been increasing its military presence in the UK from where it may have mounted this operation originally, that there were a Number of tankers, U.S.

military tanker aircraft and also surveillance aircraft, as well as helicopters arriving in the UK for a potential boarding operation.

So that operation does seem to be underway now.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

US carrying out operation to seize Venezuela-linked oil tanker in Atlantic, official say | BBC News

potential

presence

attempt

develop