US Plans to Control Venezuelan Oil, Trump's NATO Criticism, More
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News when you want it with Bloomberg News Now. I'm Amy Morris. The United States says it has seized two sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela in back-to-back actions in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean. Bloomberg's Mike Shepard.
How did U.S. forces justify seizing two Venezuela-linked oil tankers?
This would be perhaps the fourth or more seizure. of a Venezuela bound or Venezuela departing tanker by U.S. forces as a result of this blockade that the U.S. has imposed around the country seeking to rein in any attempt to extract Venezuelan oil without U.S. permission.
U.S. forces boarded a Venezuela-linked sanctioned oil tanker in the North Atlantic after pursuing it for weeks. Then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posted on social media that U.S. forces also took control of the tanker Sofia in the Caribbean. Noem says both ships were either last docked in Venezuela or en route to it. After briefing Senate lawmakers about the U.S. operation in Venezuela, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth talked to reporters on Capitol Hill
We are going to take between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil. We're going to sell it in the marketplace at market rates, not at the discounts Venezuela was getting. That money will then be handled in such a way that we will control how it is dispersed in a way that benefits the Venezuelan people, not corruption, not the regime. So we have a lot of leverage to move on the stabilization front.
Rubio says the second phase will ensure that other Western companies have access to the Venezuelan oil market. The Trump administration plans to control those future sales of oil from Venezuela, using the proceeds to rebuild Venezuela's economy. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says the U.S. will sell Venezuelan oil indefinitely.
If we control the flow of oil, the sales of those oil, and the flow of the cash that comes from those sales, we have large leverage. We need to have that leverage and that control of those oil sales to drive the changes that simply must happen in Venezuela.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright was speaking at the Goldman Sachs Energy, Clean Tech and Utilities Conference in Miami. President Trump has also leveled fresh criticism toward NATO just days after Denmark's prime minister said Trump's desired takeover of Greenland would mean the end of the military alliance. White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt released a statement saying that Trump is considering different ways for Trump to take over the island, which is a territory of Denmark. We learn more about why the president is so focused on Greenland from Bloomberg's Lizzie Burden.
Roughly three times the size of Texas. Greenland sits at a strategically important location in the North Atlantic and Arctic. It has vast stores of critical minerals and fossil fuels coveted by the U.S. and its strategic rivals China and Russia.
Despite his concerns, President Trump says he remains committed to the NATO alliance. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he'll be meeting with Denmark officials next week. And now stocks are struggling for direction as investors consider the shifting landscape. We do check markets for you all day long here at Bloomberg. The S&P 500 is up a quarter percent. NASDAQ is up seven tenths of a percent. The Dow now down two tenths of a percent. Ten-year Treasury yield at 4.14 percent. The two-year yield at 3.47 percent. And we got our first look at how the labor market ended last year. More on that with Bloomberg's Michael McKee.
ADP is out with its monthly estimate of jobs created in the month of December. 41,000, they say. Annual pay up 4.4%. The change in private employment, of course, is 41,000.
They don't measure what's happening with government. And Bloomberg's Mike McKee tells us we'll get more numbers when the Labor Department reports December jobs on Friday. Job openings have dropped to their lowest level in more than a year. Hiring also slowed. That indicates most employers are reluctant to make any big changes to headcount. New JOLTS data show the number of layoffs in November dropped to a six-month low.
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