The Bella 1 had been followed by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter across the Atlantic Ocean for nearly two weeks when the ship’s crew employed a novel tactic to evade the U.S. military: painting a Russian flag on its hull.
The aging and rusting oil tanker also received a new name: the Marinera. Moscow soon sent a diplomatic request to Washington to stop pursuing the ship.
It was New Year’s Eve, and the tanker, sanctioned for being part of a ghost fleet used to move illicit oil around the world, was sailing north, possibly heading for Russian waters, east of Finland.
Trump officials rejected the diplomatic warning, saying the newly painted flag was illegitimate and the ship was “stateless,” effectively calling Russia’s bluff. A Coast Guard cutter, named Munro, remained in pursuit.
As the tanker approached the North Atlantic between the United Kingdom and Iceland, US military aircraft began prepositioning at air bases in the United Kingdom. Special Operations Forces, including Navy SEAL commandos and an Army helicopter unit known as the “Night Stalkers,” prepared for a possible mission.
Finally, on Wednesday, about 190 miles south of Iceland, American personnel rappelled from helicopters and boarded the tanker, taking control of it.
A Russian submarine and a destroyer were in the area, but “they both left very quickly when we arrived,” US President Donald Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday.
The action ended an 18-day, approximately 4,000-mile (almost 6,500 km) chase that began when the tanker took its first evasive measures to avoid the US Coast Guard as it approached Venezuela the week before Christmas.
The chase underscores the extent to which the US is determined to enforce Trump’s “total and complete blockade” of oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. But it also raises interesting questions about tactics and strategy, including why the government waited so long to seize an oil tanker that was by all accounts empty.
“The US Coast Guard has global reach in intelligence and tracking by partnering not only with the US Navy, but with the broader Intelligence Community. What is unusual is spending so much time tracking before attacking to stop it,” said retired Adm. James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and CNN senior military analyst.
Former US officials and military analysts said, in interviews with CNN, that the seizure appeared intended to send a message to other sanctioned tankers now fleeing Venezuela who might try to adopt a Russian flag to avoid capture.
Officials with knowledge of the matter said the Trump administration was unimpressed by the sudden flag change and there was a desire to send a broader message that such a move would have no practical effect.
“It would have set a bad precedent in many ways if this ship had been able to essentially change flags mid-voyage and ‘become a Russian vessel,’” said Joseph Webster, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “They wanted to avoid repeating this tactic in the future.”
Webster added that there were also bigger considerations for the Russians. “They don’t want to stir up the hornet’s nest and compromise their position in a much more important negotiation with Washington over Ukraine,” he said.
The United States has now seized five oil tankers in the last month — including two in the Caribbean Sea on Wednesday and Friday, the Sophia and the Olina, after they left the Venezuelan coast. The New York Times reported that US military forces are pursuing up to 16 sanctioned oil tankers that left Venezuela in an attempt to evade the US blockade.
The actions signal how far the Trump administration is now willing to go to enforce long-standing sanctions against countries like Russia, Iran and Venezuela, all of which have managed to sell illicit oil thanks to ghost fleets operating around the world.
The offensive is a key part of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on the Venezuelan government to cooperate in oil production — after the U.S. captured and brought the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, to New York to face charges — and to ensure that Venezuela’s oil reserves do not leak to other countries.
But unlike the other four tankers seized after leaving Venezuela in the nearby Caribbean Sea, the Bella 1 was traveling toward the country and did not appear to have oil on board.
“It sends a strong signal to the entire ‘ghost fleet’, numbering hundreds of hulls, that they are not safe anywhere in the world, whether loaded with cargo or not,” Stavridis said.
For years, ghost fleets of oil tankers have successfully moved millions of barrels of sanctioned crude from Iran, Russia and Venezuela. Much of it has ended up in China, providing these countries with a vital source of income despite what are supposed to be crippling economic sanctions.
Drastic measures against the clandestine fleet
The Bella 1 was sanctioned in 2024 after the US Treasury Department accused the ship of being part of a network of vessels dedicated to the “illicit transportation of oil and other goods.” At the time, it was owned by a company based in Panama.
Sanctioned oil tankers like the Bella 1 often try to hide their identity by changing the country under whose flag they sail. The Bella 1 was sailing under a false Guyanese flag as it approached Venezuela, according to US officials.
The tanker was first observed transporting sanctioned crude in 2020, according to data and analytics firm Kpler. The ship had last visited Venezuela in May 2023, where it loaded approximately two million barrels of crude oil bound for Malaysia under an alias.
In early September, the tanker loaded crude oil on Kharg Island in Iran. The ship turned off its location tracking system in the Strait of Hormuz, a common tactic for vessels carrying sanctioned Iranian crude, according to Kpler. Bella 1 remained hidden for about two months and began transmitting location data again in late October in “ballast” status, meaning it no longer had oil on board. Photos of the tanker show it was floating high in the water, another indicator that it was not carrying crude oil.
The ship traveled through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and then through the Strait of Gibraltar, heading toward the Caribbean and Venezuela while attempting to conceal its location, according to Kpler.
On December 10, the Bella 1 was in the middle of its voyage to the Caribbean when the US first seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, the Skipper.
The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard participated in the operation to take control of the Skipper, a crude oil tanker that had previously been sanctioned by the US, in 2022.
The Skipper, carrying Venezuelan crude, had left a Venezuelan oil terminal and was headed to Cuba and then Asia, but was intercepted by the US in international waters, according to a US official.
“As you probably know, we just seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela,” Trump said on December 10 after the operation. “Large, very large oil tanker, actually the largest ever seized.”
Asked what would happen to the oil the tanker was carrying, Trump said: “We’ll keep it, I guess.”
The tanker is now off the Gulf Coast south of Texas, according to the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.
Trump further increased the US stance the following week, saying in a Truth Social post that he was ordering a “TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE” of sanctioned oil tankers arriving and departing Venezuela.
Four days later, the U.S. seized a second ship off the coast of Venezuela, the Centuries, a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker leaving Venezuela and headed to Asia, according to a U.S. official.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said it was carrying sanctioned Venezuelan oil, although the ship itself did not appear on a list of sanctioned vessels.
The next day, the United States Coast Guard also attempted to seize the Bella 1 in international waters as it headed toward Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea.
A court order had been issued for the seizure of the tanker. But when the U.S. Coast Guard attempted to board the vessel, the ship’s crew did not comply. Instead, the tanker changed course and continued sailing north to flee, beginning the Coast Guard’s pursuit.
“The U.S. Coast Guard is actively pursuing a sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion,” a U.S. official said last month following the attempted interception. “You are flying a false flag and under a judicial seizure order.”
It was not entirely clear where the tanker was headed, although Kpler analysts at the time wrote that Russia and the Baltic Sea were both possibilities.
On December 30, a magistrate judge in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia approved a seizure order for the Bella 1, valid until January 13. The warrant was unveiled Thursday, although a 28-page affidavit supporting the seizure was completely redacted.
As the chase continued in the North Atlantic, Coast Guard personnel spotted a Russian flag on the ship on Dec. 31, which a U.S. official said had been carelessly painted on its side. That same day, Moscow sent the United States a formal diplomatic request to stop the pursuit of the tanker.
The vessel appeared in the official Russian ship register under a new name, the Marinera.
Lloyd’s List, a shipping trade publication, reported that 17 ghost fleet tankers had recently claimed Russian nationality last month as the United States increased its aggression toward Venezuela.
“It’s not completely unusual; you have these tankers who paint over their names or change them or try to hide things to make it look like a different tanker,” said Matt Smith, chief Americas oil analyst at Kpler. “It’s unusual that this was seized far beyond the waters of the United States. That’s the evolutionary aspect of this.”
US officials previously told CNN that the request created a possible complication if the US captured the ship. But the Trump administration rejected the Russian-flagged claim and deemed the vessel stateless, according to two sources familiar with the matter, paving the way for the ship’s capture.
SEAL commandos and “night stalkers”
Prior to the US operation to seize the newly named Marinera, the US military positioned assets in the UK while the tanker traveled in waters between the UK and Iceland, including at least 12 C-17s and two AC-130 gunships.
US P-8 surveillance planes, flying from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk, England, were reportedly monitoring the tanker before its seizure, according to open source flight data. At least two V-22 Ospreys were active in the United Kingdom, including one conducting rapid rope descent training, which allows troops to quickly disembark from the aircraft without it landing, according to video posted on social media and verified by CNN.
The tanker was seized in a pre-dawn operation, according to US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
U.S. Navy SEAL commandos were among the U.S. forces that boarded the tanker, transported by the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, a helicopter unit also known as the “night stalkers,” according to two people briefed on the operation.
The United Kingdom provided support to the American operation, according to the British Ministry of Defense.
Two Russian military aircraft flew over the U.S. Coast Guard vessel a couple of days earlier, Coast Guard Commander Adm. Kevin Lunday told ABC News in an interview Thursday. But he said that “at no time was the Coast Guard at all concerned about the Russian military presence interfering with our legal authority and our operation that was ongoing.”
Noem said in a social media post that the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Munro followed the tanker “through high seas and treacherous storms, maintaining diligent vigilance and protecting our country with the determination and patriotism that make Americans proud.”
It is still unclear where the Bella 1 is headed. The vessel has moved south toward the middle of the Atlantic since it was seized, according to MarineTraffic. Trump told Fox News on Thursday that “oil is being unloaded right now” following the ship’s seizure, although the tanker did not appear to have oil on board.
With or without oil, the United States could take the tanker to be processed and sold at auction, said Aaron Roth, a former strategic adviser to the commandant of the Coast Guard during the Obama administrations and the first Trump administration.
“I would assume that, based on the vessels and their composition and where they are in terms of overall safety and reliability, there would probably be a market to acquire those vessels,” Roth said. “So there may be a sale process at some point in the future.”