By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) \u2013 The United States is handing over a tanker to Venezuela that it seized this \u200dmonth, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Wednesday, the first known instance in which President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has returned such a tanker.<\/p>\n
The United States has been carrying out a months-long effort to seize oil tankers \u200clinked to Venezuela \u2013 carrying out seven \u200capprehensions since late last year.<\/p>\n
The officials, who were speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the tanker that is being handed to Venezuelan authorities was the Panama-flagged supertanker M\/T \u200bSophia. They did not say why the tanker was returned.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Coast Guard, which leads \u200dinterdiction and seizure operations, did \u200bnot immediately respond to a request for \u200bcomment.<\/p>\n
The Sophia was interdicted on January 7 by the \u200dCoast Guard and U.S. military forces. At the time, the administration said the Sophia, which is under sanctions, was a \u201cstateless, sanctioned dark fleet motor tanker.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has focused his foreign policy in Latin America \u200don Venezuela, initially aiming to push Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power. After failing to find a diplomatic solution, \u200dTrump ordered \u200dU.S. forces to fly into the country \u200bto grab him and his wife \u200bin \u2060a daring overnight raid on January 3.<\/p>\n
Since \u200cthen, Trump has said the U.S. plans to control Venezuela\u2019s oil resources indefinitely as it seeks to rebuild the country\u2019s dilapidated oil industry in a $100 billion plan.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Chris \u2060Reese, Rod Nickel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) \u2013 The United States is handing over a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-436031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}