Lot of misinformation and ignorance concerning these events out there. This should have been dealt with a lot sooner. Better late than never. Got his off Facebook.
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Trump Isn’t “Pirating Ships” — He Must Seize and Sell 300 Venezuelan Oil Tankers to Satisfy an International Court Judgment Owed to U.S. Companies. A lot of people are reacting emotionally to the idea of oil tankers being seized, but most of the outrage comes from not understanding what is actually being discussed.
So let’s slow this down and explain it clearly, legally, and step by step.
This is not war. This is not piracy. This is judgment enforcement — the same principle used every day when courts seize bank accounts, property, aircraft, or cargo from someone who lost in court and refuses to pay.
1. What Venezuela did (the part that always gets skipped)
In the 2000s, under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela seized oil projects owned by foreign companies, including major U.S. firms such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.
This wasn’t a policy disagreement. It was expropriation:
• Contracts were broken
• Assets were taken
• Compensation that had been agreed to was not paid
That is not controversial. It is historical fact.
2. What the courts decided
Those U.S. companies didn’t complain on social media.
They went to international arbitration and U.S. courts — the proper legal venues.
They won. The rulings were:
• Final
• Binding
• Enforceable
Venezuela lost and was ordered to pay tens of billions of dollars in damages.
3. The real problem: Venezuela refused to pay
Here is the key point most critics ignore. Venezuela refused to comply with the court judgments. In any legal system — domestic or international — when a party:
• Loses in court
• Owes a judgment
• Refuses to pay
…the law allows creditors to seize commercial assets belonging to the debtor outside its borders to satisfy the judgment. This is called judgment enforcement. Countries do not get a free pass simply because they are countries.
4. Why oil tankers even enter the conversation. Venezuela’s primary commercial asset is oil. Oil moves on oil tankers. Those tankers:
• Carry state-owned Venezuelan oil
• Are commercial property, not military or diplomatic assets
• Can be lawfully seized by court order in cooperating jurisdictions
This is no different in principle from seizing, • A bank account. • A plane. • A shipment of goods. Calling this “piracy” is legally incorrect. Piracy is theft without lawful authority. This is court-ordered seizure to collect a debt already ruled on.
5. The math everyone avoids
Let’s use conservative, realistic numbers so no one can claim exaggeration.
• Estimated unpaid court judgments: ~$35 billion
• Oil price used: $62 per barrel
• Typical large oil tanker (VLCC): ~2 million barrels
Value of one full tanker:
• Gross value: ~$124 million
• Net value after realistic court-sale discounts: ~$115 million
Now do the math:
$35,000,000,000 ÷ $115,000,000 ≈ 300 tankers
That’s where the number comes from. Not one tanker. Not ten. About three hundred. One tanker only covers about one-third of one percent of what Venezuela owes.
6. What this means — and what it does NOT mean. This does not mean:
• Tankers are being randomly grabbed
• This is a military action
• The goal is punishment
It does mean:
• Courts already ruled
• A debt legally exists
• Enforcement is the only option left when payment is refused. When Donald Trump talks about seizing oil shipments, he is not inventing a new power. He is talking about using existing legal authority to enforce judgments Venezuela already lost. In plain English: You took property, you lost in court, you refused to pay — so your commercial assets are seized and sold until the debt is satisfied. That is how the rule of law works.
7. Why you don’t see hundreds of tankers seized
Because enforcement is:
• Legally narrow
• Jurisdiction-dependent
• Deliberately targeted
Venezuela also structured its exports to:
• Avoid enforceable ports
• Use intermediaries
• Break shipments into smaller pieces
So tanker seizures are rare, careful, and strategic, not mass roundups. Tankers are leverage, not a magic wand. The bottom line
• Venezuela seized U.S. assets
• Venezuela lost in international court
• Venezuela refuses to pay
• The debt is ~$35 billion
• A tanker is worth ~$115 million net
• It would take ~300 Venezuelan oil tankers to make the judgment whole.
This is lawful enforcement, not piracy. This is accounting, not aggression. This is what happens when court rulings are ignored. Final thought - People arguing “this sounds extreme” are missing the most important fact: The court already decided. Once that happens, enforcement isn’t optional — it’s inevitable. Everything else flows from that reality.
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@Rajk999 saidWhat utter nonsense. No international agreement gives one nation the authority to unilaterally enforce arbitration decisions made by courts and certainly no one can just arbitrarily add immense numbers to them which no court ever found. Your numbers are absurdly exaggerated:
Lot of misinformation and ignorance concerning these events out there. This should have been dealt with a lot sooner. Better late than never. Got his off Facebook.
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Trump Isn’t “Pirating Ships” — He Must Seize and Sell 300 Venezuelan Oil Tankers to Satisfy an International Court Judgment Owed to U.S. Companies. A lot of people are r ...[text shortened]... — it’s inevitable. Everything else flows from that reality.
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"The World Bank's International Centre Settlement of Investment Disputes, an international arbitration tribunal, awarded ExxonMobil $1.6 billion in 2014 and ConocoPhillips nearly $9 billion in 2019. Venezuela's dispute with ExxonMobil was ongoing as of 2025. An attempt by Venezuela to annul the $9 billion award to ConocoPhillips failed in January 2025 when the World Bank body upheld the 2019 decision, and the country had yet to pay.
However, none of these legal battles contested Venezuela's ownership over its oil reserves (see the ExxonMobil decision here and ConocoPhillips decision here). "
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/did-venezuela-illegally-steal-u-s-oil-as-trump-claimed-what-to-know/ar-AA1SQYSG?ocid=BingNewsSerp
The judgments, which are not final in most cases and do not approach $35 billion, are in favor of multinational corporations, not the US government. Thus, the latter has no legal right to "enforce" those judgments - it is not the plaintiff.
Really, I don't know where you got this from but it is stunningly ignorant propaganda.
@Rajk999 saidHere's how decisions from the International Centre For Settlement Of Investment Disputes, the body that gave the awards you mentioned, are enforced:
Lot of misinformation and ignorance concerning these events out there. This should have been dealt with a lot sooner. Better late than never. Got his off Facebook.
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Trump Isn’t “Pirating Ships” — He Must Seize and Sell 300 Venezuelan Oil Tankers to Satisfy an International Court Judgment Owed to U.S. Companies. A lot of people are r ...[text shortened]... — it’s inevitable. Everything else flows from that reality.
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"For an investment arbitral award to be enforced, two steps must typically be taken: first, the award must be recognised and converted into a domestic judgment. Second, the recognised judgment must be enforced according to domestic procedures governing the execution of judgments."
https://www.acerislaw.com/enforcement-of-investment-arbitration-awards/
That's it. Nothing about any State's armed forces seizing the assets of another State.
@no1marauder saidThe power of the ICIS is limited, and people like you with the mentality of a criminal, like Chavez, Maduro and other international criminals who belive that because these international courts have no power to enforce these judgments, that they can escape justice. Well, Maduro is about to find out.
Here's how decisions from the International Centre For Settlement Of Investment Disputes, the body that gave the awards you mentioned, are enforced:
"For an investment arbitral award to be enforced, two steps must typically be taken: first, the award must be recognised and converted into a domestic judgment. Second, the recognised judgment must be enforced according to ...[text shortened]... on-awards/
That's it. Nothing about any State's armed forces seizing the assets of another State.
Presidents without balls, the kind you like, have come and gone. They have allowed these atrocities to continue, and it is time that these judgments are enforced or Venezuela pay the price.
@no1marauder saidThis is not just about oil industry. Chavez expropriated over 10,000,000 acres of land without compensation from land holders. All the infrastructure of utility companies and factories were stolen and expats expelled. The total estimated value of all judgments against Venezuela is in the vicinity of $35 Billion.
What utter nonsense. No international agreement gives one nation the authority to unilaterally enforce arbitration decisions made by courts and certainly no one can just arbitrarily add immense numbers to them which no court ever found. Your numbers are absurdly exaggerated:
"The World Bank's International Centre Settlement of Investment Disputes, an international arbi ...[text shortened]... plaintiff.
Really, I don't know where you got this from but it is stunningly ignorant propaganda.
Venezuela is run by crooks who need to be removed. Thankfully there are people around the world who care about truth and justice. People like you who support these criminals need to be removed along with them.
@Rajk999 saidCriminals are people, like you, who refuse to follow the law. All you ever do is support illegal violations of international law invariably involving mass murder.
The power of the ICIS is limited, and people like you with the mentality of a criminal, like Chavez, Maduro and other international criminals who belive that because these international courts have no power to enforce these judgments, that they can escape justice. Well, Maduro is about to find out.
Presidents without balls, the kind you like, have come and gone. They hav ...[text shortened]... atrocities to continue, and it is time that these judgments are enforced or Venezuela pay the price.
The cases involving these exportations are proceeding in the courts (slowly as these things often do); there is no legal basis for seizures by the US government. Getting your info from a Facebook post by a "digital creator" with no apparent qualifications in this area make you embarrassingly gullible (besides the bloodthirsty sociopath you have established yourself to be many times here).
A blockade is an act of war and the US Constitution makes clear that it is Congress, not the President (no matter how much you admire his "balls"😉, that has the sole power to declare war.
@Rajk999 saidIt's up to the People of Venezuela to remove their government if they find it to be a tyranny. It's none of the US government's business.
This is not just about oil industry. Chavez expropriated over 10,000,000 acres of land without compensation from land holders. All the infrastructure of utility companies and factories were stolen and expats expelled. The total estimated value of all judgments against Venezuela is in the vicinity of $35 Billion.
Venezuela is run by crooks who need to be removed. Thankf ...[text shortened]... truth and justice. People like you who support these criminals need to be removed along with them.
That is not supporting Maduro; that is supporting the idea of limited government enshrined in our country's founding documents.
@no1marauder saidThe people of Venezuela fled the country, you damn fool. They ran. They ran all over South America, Central America, North America and the Caribbean... millions of them They were being killed and starved. They lived off garbage dumps. They come to Trinidad, in flimsy pirogues, risking death to buy toilet paper, sardines and crackers. They tried to change the govt, but there is no such thing as free and fair elections in these countries, a fact you are well aware of. Yet you support them.
It's up to the People of Venezuela to remove their government if they find it to be a tyranny. It's none of the US government's business.
That is not supporting Maduro; that is supporting the idea of limited government enshrined in our country's founding documents.
It is the business of the world, to remove these criminals. Its only because of supporters of criminals like you that Maduro is allowed to live.
@no1marauder saidI guess Chavez and Maduro has the same mind like you. They thought they could flout the law and escape.
Criminals are people, like you, who refuse to follow the law. All you ever do is support illegal violations of international law invariably involving mass murder.
The cases involving these exportations are proceeding in the courts (slowly as these things often do); there is no legal basis for seizures by the US government. Getting your info from a Facebook post by a "d ...[text shortened]... t the President (no matter how much you admire his "balls"😉, that has the sole power to declare war.
Justice has reached their shores.
As for you, GFY.
@Rajk999 saidRepeating the same lie over and over again doesn't transform it into the truth.
The people of Venezuela fled the country, you damn fool. They ran. They ran all over South America, Central America, North America and the Caribbean... millions of them They were being killed and starved. They lived off garbage dumps. They come to Trinidad, in flimsy pirogues, risking death to buy toilet paper, sardines and crackers. They tried to change the govt, but ...[text shortened]... ese criminals. Its only because of supporters of criminals like you that Maduro is allowed to live.
I don't "support" Maduro.
@no1marauder saidChavez and Maduro are criminals for the reasons listed.
Repeating the same lie over and over again doesn't transform it into the truth.
I don't "support" Maduro.
They were brought to justice, and refused to abide by the ruling of the court.
The court has no power to enforce the ruling.
Secretly you are happy.
But countries can enforce the ruling. The USA / Trump did it.
Yet you are against it.
Clearly you support Maduro
@Rajk999 saidThose aren't criminal courts.
Chavez and Maduro are criminals for the reasons listed.
They were brought to justice, and refused to abide by the ruling of the court.
The court has no power to enforce the ruling.
Secretly you are happy.
But countries can enforce the ruling. The USA / Trump did it.
Yet you are against it.
Clearly you support Maduro
There are procedures in place to enforce the judgments as already explained.
No, countries have no legal power to enforce these awards by force (absent UN Security Council action).
Yes, I am against the use of force in international affairs unless in self-defense.
I am against wars started by the President of the US without any Congressional approval or legal basis.
No, I don't "support" Maduro.
You tell a lot of fairly obvious lies, don't you?
@no1marauder saidWell, I think the Vennies are celebrating that there is a new Sherrif in town, and things are going to change.
Those aren't criminal courts.
There are procedures in place to enforce the judgments as already explained.
No, countries have no legal power to enforce these awards by force (absent UN Security Council action).
Yes, I am against the use of force in international affairs unless in self-defense.
I am against wars started by the President of the US without any C ...[text shortened]... legal basis.
No, I don't "support" Maduro.
You tell a lot of fairly obvious lies, don't you?
@no1marauder saidDo you think Trump is wrong to order a strike on ISIS in Nigeria, who are currently killing, abusing, kidnaping and raping Christians there ?
Yes, I am against the use of force in international affairs unless in self-defense.
@no1marauder saidAfter 20 years one need to come to grips with the fact that the judgments against Venezuela are useless.
There are procedures in place to enforce the judgments as already explained.