Christiaan Triebert

Absolutely.

And it had a very interesting effect on this very large group of hundreds, if not thousands of tankers that are part of the Shadow Fleet.

Because we saw that other tankers were already going to Venezuela.

That kind of like turned around and we're like, oh, we don't want to get boarded by a U.S.

Navy vessel.

They were spooked.

They were spooked.

And at the same time, the tankers that were already in Venezuela were kind of like, we probably should stay in Venezuela and probably shouldn't leave.

And then...

in the beginning of January.

The United States enters Venezuela and captures Maduro, and it's chaos.

And I got this call from Anatoly, our colleague in Venezuela, and he's like, hey, Chris, I am being told that four tankers have left port.

And I'm like, OK, let me check.

And indeed, on satellite imagery, it was visible that these four tankers had departed Venezuelan waters and were sailing north.

But not only that, I also realized that besides these four tankers, there were 12 others that just disappeared.

They disappeared on satellite imagery.

They were there the day before and the next day they were gone.

So it seemed all these tankers left in a coordinated effort to defy the partial blockade by the United States on Venezuelan oil exports.

And one expert I talked to said this is a zombie race.

Right.