Christiaan Triebert

But it's probably around like 10 to 20 percent of oil tankers worldwide that have engaged in this kind of activity, which is quite a bit.

But given it's only related to Russia, Iran and Venezuela, the share of the oil on the world market is about three to nine percent, according to the data that's available.

So the point of these U.S.

sanctions is to basically limit the revenue that's going to the Kremlin to fund their war effort in Ukraine, to Iran, which the U.S.

says they're using the revenue from oil to fund their activities with Hezbollah and other activities that the U.S.

doesn't like.

And the same with Venezuela.

It's propping up the Maduro government at the time.

But what we have seen is that they're successful in shipping this oil around the world and still earning significant amounts of money on that oil.

Yes, that's exactly right.

These ships have been shipping that oil and there's not really any kind of enforcement on these ships.

So the shipments of oil just continue.

But all of that changed in December.

In December, there's this very large military pressure campaign on the Maduro government in Venezuela by the U.S.

There's a buildup of a huge military force ahead of, of course, Maduro's capture.

But also the Trump administration said any oil tankers that want to ship Venezuelan oil that is not going to the United States, we're going to stop these vessels, board them and potentially even seize them.

And that was not just like an empty threat.

It actually started happening.

We saw one tanker being stopped, another tanker being stopped.

Commandos took over another tanker, fast roping onto the deck and moving up to the bridge.