The Trump administration escalated its pressure on and control of Venezuelan oil today,

seizing two oil tankers and declaring it intends to, quote, indefinitely sell the country's oil.

Nick Schiffrin reports.

A middle of the night capture in the Caribbean.

The U.S. military posted this video of U.S. forces seizing the Sofia, a sanctioned Panama flag supertanker carrying Venezuelan oil.

Just hours before, U.S. forces seized another tanker they'd been pursuing for two weeks

after it slipped through the U.S.

Caribbean quarantine.

The Marinera recently changed its name and claimed to be Russian flagged, and Russian TV showed

this footage from its deck.

A Russian ship and submarine provided an escort, but did nothing to stop the U.S. capture.

It's a tale of two tankers and of global U.S. pressure on Venezuela's

most valuable asset. The U.S. military said the Sophia sailed without its transponder, part

of a Venezuelan shadow fleet, and is now being escorted to the U.S. The Marinera met its fate

about 5,000 miles away just south of Iceland with the help

of British armed forces.

The U.S. envisions total control over the extraction and sale of Venezuelan oil forever, starting

with crude already produced as Energy Secretary Chris Wright laid out today.

We're going to market the crude coming out of Venezuela first this backed up stored oil,

and then indefinitely going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela

into the marketplace.

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, which the U.S. helped extract beginning

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