Controversial Tankers Begin Entering Venezuelan Waters from Iran

The fuel tanker Fortune, the first of five such vessels sent by Iran to help alleviate a gasoline shortage in Venezuela, entered the Latin American country’s EEZ waters on Saturday evening despite threats from the United States that it would respond. “The ships from the fraternal Islamic Republic of Iran are now in our exclusive economic zone,” Venezuelan vice president and oil minister Tareck El Aissami wrote in a tweet Saturday evening, shortly after the Fortune was met by a Venezuelan naval vessel and military aircraft. An EEZ is defined by the United Nations as the extent to which a nation can exploit offshore natural resources, but is not necessarily its territorial waters. In total, the tankers are transferring an estimated 1.5 million barrels of gasoline and alkylate, a synthetic fuel often used with smaller internal combustion engines such as those in motorcycles and outboards. Venezuela, a member of OPEC, has seen its vast system of refineries shut down and its economy collapse owing to a combination of low oil prices, poor management, foreign-capital flight and external sanctions over the policies of the late Hugo Chavez and, since Chavez’s death in 2013, Nicolas Maduro.