Updates with details throughout
The US Navy on Monday sunk a boat in international waters off Venezuela's coast, killing three, President Donald Trump said, the second such operation so far this month that the US has justified as counter-narcotics enforcement.
The "kinetic strike", announced by Trump in a social media post that included a video of the attack, following his wide-ranging comments Sunday in which he did not rule out US strikes on mainland Venezuela or a US operation to remove Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro from power.
"The Strike resulted in 3 male terrorists killed in action", Trump posted. A similar attack on 3 September resulted in 11 casualties, who the US accused of being members of a drug transporting crew.
Trump said Sunday that the US naval deployment has led to thinner commercial vessel traffic in the southern Caribbean. "There's certainly not a lot of boats out there," Trump said. "We are going to see no boats out there, which is fine as far as I'm concerned."
In addition to tankers transporting crude and other commodities from Venezuela, that part of the Caribbean also serves as a shipping lane for Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.
"We will see what happens — it's not an option or a non-option," US president Donald Trump said on Sunday when asked if the US could oust Maduro from power.
The US Congress normally has to authorize use of military force by the Pentagon. But the Trump administration presents the massive deployment of naval vessels, marines and F35 fighter jets in the Caribbean as part of a drug interdiction operation. The Trump administration has asserted the right "to take on and eradicate these drug cartels no matter where they're operating from".
The US naval maneuvers and tough rhetoric have prompted sabre-rattling from Caracas as well.
Venezuela has deployed its military and militia forces, including to the sprawling Paraguana refining center (CRP) that holds 971,000 b/d of its 1.3mn b/d of historical nameplate capacity. Processing rates run much lower, with fuel shortages frequent in Venezuela.
Exiled oil union boss Ivan Freites told Argus that CRP had seen an increase in already heavy police and military presence. CRP since 2012 has been under military control, after a fatal explosion there took some process units offline until now.
Other key oil areas in nearby Zulia state have also seen increased military presence and other incidents, with an explosion in Zulia on 11 September injuring 40, according to the governor's office. The government said it was a fireworks factory, but other observers said it seemed near energy infrastructure.
"It was a single, white-smoke explosion, no streaks, no streams, no secondary detonations," an observer there in energy who asked not to be named told Argus.
Maduro promised to try for "treason" anyone who reached out to US forces to encourage them to invade Venezuela. During that same broadcast interior minister Diosdado Cabello cradled what looked like an M4 US assault rifle together with Victor Clark, the governor of Falcon state, home to the CRP. Clark was also armed with what looked like an American-made assault rifle.
Most channels of communication with the US have broken off since the attacks, Maduro said Monday. The only remaining point of communication is with Bogota, Colombia-based US diplomats "so that we can bring our migrants home, which is a very high priority for the Venezuelan government," Maduro said.
