US forces have reportedly seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela in what would be a major escalation of Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against the South American country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro.

Two US officials told Reuters the operation was led by the US Coast Guard but did not name the tanker or say specifically where the interception happened. Bloomberg also reported the tanker’s seizure.

The US Coast Guard and the state department referred inquiries to the White House.

Maduro has been in power since 2013, when he succeeded Hugo Chávez after the latter’s death from cancer. Widely believed to have stolen last year’s presidential election, Maduro has clung to power after launching a wave of repression that forced Edmundo González, the apparent winner of the 2024 vote, into exile in Spain.

Since August, the US has put a $50m bounty on Maduro’s head, launched the biggest naval deployment in the Caribbean Sea since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and carried out a series of deadly airstrikes on alleged drug boats that have killed more than 80 people.

On Tuesday, two US fighter jets circled the Gulf of Venezuela for about 40 minutes. The jets flew just north of Maracaibo, Venezuela’s most populous city.

On Wednesday’s González’s most important backer, the opposition leader María Corina Machado, was awarded the Nobel peace prize for her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a peaceful and just transition from dictatorship to democracy”.

Machado’s daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, accepted the prize, telling a ceremony in Oslo that her mother’s struggle to end years of “obscene corruption” and “brutal dictatorship” would go on.

More details soon …