Rachel Abrams: From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams and this is the daily. President Trump says that the United States has now seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. And so this is >> since December, the US has been stopping and seizing oil tankers traveling in and out of Venezuela. >> Largest one ever seized, actually. after President Trump imposed a blockade on ships carrying sanctioned Venezuelan oil. >> Showing US helicopters surrounding the ship. You see that there? >> Ships that are part of what's known as a ghost fleet. >> That's the US Coast Guard seizing another ghost fleet tanker. >> This now as the US is pursuing a third oil tanker near Venezuela. >> Oil tankers that try to secretly make their way around the world. >> Four vessels are now in American custody. Several more are being tracked. It marks the fifth tanker the US has seized a sixth oil tanker. Now >> a seventh sanctioned oil tanker >> funding pro states like Venezuela, Iran, and Russia. Today, my colleague Christian Tbert on what these ghost fleets are exactly and how their days might be numbered. It's Tuesday, January 27th. Christian, welcome to the Daily.

Christian Tbert: Thank you. So Christian, the US has been seizing and stopping oil tankers coming in and out of Venezuela for weeks now. And at first this seemed like part of a pressure campaign against President Nicholas Maduro, but then obviously the US captured Maduro. And I think a lot of people assumed that this effort, this pressure on the ships would stop, but instead it's actually not only continued, but expanded. You are the newsroom's resident expert on these oil tankers. You've been tracking all of this as part of our visual investigations team. So let's start at the very beginning. What is a ghost fleet or shadow fleet?

Christian Tbert: That's a very good question. Besides shadow fleet and ghost fleet, there's a third term which is dark fleet. So >> it's interesting because there's not a well- definfined definition. It's basically a term for oil tankers that use deceptive practices to kind of hide that they're transporting sanctioned oil. Oil that's sanctioned by the United States. And these ships want to hide that they're picking up this oil and delivering this oil. Why do I know a lot about it? Is because that after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, there was this same sudden surge in interest like ghost fleet, dark fleet, shadow fleet. And my manager asked me like, Chris, can you find out what are actually the ships of this fleet? So that's how it started for me. But there are hundreds of tankers, maybe even thousands. We don't really know. And basically these tankers are shipping sanctioned Russian oil or sanctioned Iranian oil and Venezuelan oil. They're always shipping oil for either of these three countries and sometimes for all three. Most of the oil goes to China and a significant portion goes to India as well and these ships have decided to do that. There's a lot of money to make if you're shipping sanctioned oil and they're trying to hide that.

Rachel Abrams: Got it. Okay. So, do you have any sense given the fact that this is literally called a shadow fleet of how much of the world's oil is transported this way?

Christian Tbert: It's hard to say, right? Because they're obviously trying to deceive everyone that they're actually shipping this oil, but it's probably around like 10 to 20% of oil tankers worldwide that have engaged in this kind of activity, which is quite a bit. But given that it's only related to Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, the share of the oil on the world market is about 3 to 9% according to the data that's available.

Rachel Abrams: So obviously sanctions are meant to hurt countries economically, but what are the goals in these specific cases? So the point of these US sanctions is to basically limit the revenue that's going to the Kremlin to fund their war effort in Ukraine to Iran, which the US says, you know, they're using the revenue from oil to fund their activities with Hezbollah and other other activities that the US doesn't like. And the same with Venezuela. It's it's it's propping up the Maduro government at the time.