US forces have seized a sanc­tioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, ac­cord­ing to sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al news agen­cies.

The move rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant es­ca­la­tion in the stand­off be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Cara­cas and sig­nals a clear shift in pos­ture by Pres­i­dent Trump. Bloomberg, which first re­port­ed the de­vel­op­ment, said the ac­tion could dis­rupt Venezuela’s al­ready lim­it­ed oil ex­ports.

In­dus­try ob­servers say oth­er ship­pers may now hes­i­tate to load Venezue­lan crude, con­cerned they could face sim­i­lar in­ter­cep­tions.

Un­til now, US ac­tiv­i­ty in the re­gion had large­ly in­volved re­mote strikes on small ves­sels iden­ti­fied as drug-smug­gling tar­gets. This in­ci­dent is be­lieved to be the first di­rect con­fronta­tion in­volv­ing Amer­i­can per­son­nel.