The United States has seized an oil tanker that was last docked in Venezuela, according to US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region,” Noem wrote on X on Saturday.

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The US Coast Guard apprehended the vessel before dawn with support from the Pentagon, she added.

The incident occurred just days after US President Donald Trump announced a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.

Trump and members of his administration have spoken openly in recent days about their desire to take control of the country’s large oil reserves, baselessly asserting that they rightfully belong to the United States.

This is the second time in recent weeks that the US has seized a tanker near Venezuela, and it comes amid a large US military buildup in the region as Trump continues to ramp up threats against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The legal right of the Trump administration to seize vessels under US sanctions, even in international waters, is contested.

Vice President Delcy Rodriguez responded to the seizure by calling it an act of “theft and kidnapping”.

“These acts will not go unpunished,” a statement shared on social media reads, adding that Venezuela will take “all corresponding actions, including filing a complaint before the United Nations Security Council, other multilateral organizations, and the governments of the world.”

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Adam Clements, a former US diplomat and Pentagon official, told Al Jazeera that it is yet to be seen whether the US administration’s actions to put pressure on Maduro will produce results.

He reminded that President Trump’s administration already talked about “stemming the flow of drugs and focusing on the Western Hemisphere”, adding that Washington has also “hinted at regime change”.

Sharp fall in exports

In the days since US forces seized the first sanctioned oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast last week, there has been an effective embargo in place, with loaded vessels carrying millions of barrels of oil staying in Venezuelan waters rather than risking seizure.

Since the first seizure, Venezuelan crude exports have fallen sharply.

While many vessels picking up oil in Venezuela are under sanctions, others transporting the country’s oil and crude from Iran and Russia have not been sanctioned. Some companies, particularly the US’s Chevron, transport Venezuelan oil in their own authorised ships.

China is the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude, which accounts for about 4 percent of its imports, with shipments in December on track to average more than 600,000 barrels per day, analysts have said.

For now, the oil market is well supplied, and there are millions of barrels of oil on tankers off the coast of China waiting to offload.

If the embargo stays in place for some time, then the loss of nearly a million barrels a day of crude supply is likely to push oil prices higher.

Trump’s pressure campaign on Maduro has included a ramped-up military presence in the region and more than two dozen military strikes on alleged drug trafficking vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near Venezuela, which have killed at least 100 people.

Those strikes are widely considered illegal under both US and international law and have been described as extrajudicial killings by legal scholars and rights groups.

Trump has also said that US land strikes on the South American country could follow.

Maduro has said that the US military buildup is aimed at overthrowing him and gaining control of Venezuela’s oil resources, which are the world’s largest crude reserves.

On Saturday, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva warned Trump against an “armed intervention in Venezuela”, saying that it “would be a humanitarian catastrophe”.

At a summit of the South American Mercosur bloc in Foz do Iguacu, a city in southern Brazil, Lula repeated his stance against the US’s actions towards Venezuela in a stronger statement, stressing that it would be a “dangerous precedent for the world”.

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More than four decades after the Falklands War, between Argentina and the United Kingdom, he added, “The South American continent is once again haunted by the military presence of an extra-regional power.”