The U.S. Stopped Sanctioning Oil and Started Taking It

In late December, U.S. forces stopped two tankers in international waters — the Centuries and the Skipper — and took roughly four million barrels of Venezuelan crude off them. Venezuela's envoy had a word for it.

Maduro's ability to sell Venezuela's oil enables his fraudulent claim to power and his narco-terrorist activities. — Michael Waltz

For years the American approach to hostile oil states was to squeeze them: sanctions, isolation, pressure. Taking the cargo itself is a different act. It is not containment. It is custody. The plan predates the war with Iran. Trump announced in August 2025 that he would refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve with Venezuelan crude ^[1]. Military and economic interventions across Latin America began in October ^[2]. In December the administration wrote the "Donroe Doctrine" into its national security strategy, putting the Western Hemisphere ahead of the Indo-Pacific ^[3]. The tanker seizures came the same month. None of it waited on the Middle East. What the Iran war supplied was the market logic and the cover. When strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure pushed Brent above $119 a barrel ^[4], Trump framed Venezuelan oil as the replacement for what the Strait of Hormuz could no longer deliver.

The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait, and won't be taking any in the future, we don't need it. — Donald Trump

Then the apparatus, brick by brick. OFAC licenses decide who may buy Venezuelan crude — General Licenses 48, 49, and 50A authorize resale to Cuba's private sector while excluding state entities ^[5]. Chevron was restricted to exporting half its 240,000 barrels a day and barred from paying the Maduro government, which made the Treasury the effective manager of the revenue ^[6]. The installed interim president rewrote the hydrocarbons law, cutting royalties from 30% to 15% and opening fields to Chevron and Halliburton ^[7]. India was redirected from Iranian crude to Venezuelan, and Trump has said the U.S. is running Venezuela through a transition with indefinite control over its production ^[8]. Cuba has been under a fuel blockade for nine months, with Washington deciding which private buyers get oil ^[9]. In late August the administration described the force used against Iran and Venezuela as one strategy — energy dominance as leverage now that sanctions have failed ^[10]. Each of these is a room in the same building. The United States is no longer pressuring these regimes; it is running their oil. The ceasefire with Iran shows the same logic pointed at the Strait itself. The terms demanded joint U.S. management of the Strait of Hormuz ^[11].

We have total control of the Strait of Hormuz — Donald Trump

A ceasefire that hands Washington a management stake in the world's most important oil chokepoint is not de-escalation. It is the same custodial claim made over Venezuelan fields, extended to the water. The pause is not the end of the doctrine. It is the doctrine consolidating.