US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump yes­ter­day con­firmed that Amer­i­ca has tak­en con­trol of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port from CNN, the US Pres­i­dent said, “As you prob­a­bly know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela. Large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, ac­tu­al­ly.”

Trump did not of­fer any de­tailed ex­pla­na­tion for the move, say­ing on­ly that it was seized “for very good rea­son” and sig­nalling that the ad­min­is­tra­tion would soon re­lease ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion. Asked what would hap­pen to the oil the tanker was trans­port­ing, Trump said, “We keep it, I guess.”

CNN re­port­ed that the ves­sel was head­ing to Cu­ba, which has been grap­pling with some of the worst pow­er out­ages in decades.

The move risks fur­ther es­ca­la­tion of ten­sions with Venezuela. The US has sent hun­dreds of troops and sev­er­al war­ships, in­clud­ing its largest - the USS Ger­ald R Ford - to the Caribbean re­gion, as it con­tin­ues its cam­paign to stem the flow of drug traf­fick­ing to the US and oth­er coun­tries in the West­ern hemi­sphere.

Since Sep­tem­ber 2, the US mil­i­tary has killed 87 peo­ple in strikes that have de­stroyed 23 al­leged drug boats, and Trump has sug­gest­ed ac­tion on land could come soon.