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President Trump on Tuesday ordered a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going in and out of Venezuela (The Wall Street Journal, subscription).

What’s going on: The move, the latest in the administration’s campaign to get Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to leave the country, comprises the dispatching of 11 warships, numerous stealth jet fighters, electronic warfare planes, rescue planes, helicopters and thousands of U.S. troops to the region.

• The president—who also on Tuesday designated the Maduro government a foreign terrorist organization—“threatened the U.S. military presence would ‘only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before’ unless Maduro’s regime returned ‘Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us,’ an apparent reference to Venezuela’s nationalization of U.S.-linked holdings in the country.”
• It’s not yet known how many tankers will be affected or how involved the U.S. military will be in implementing the blockade, which comes less than a week after the administration seized a tanker of Venezuelan crude.

Why it’s important: Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest petroleum reserves, has seen its oil industry hamstrung by strict U.S. sanctions.

• The Maduro regime has sought to circumvent the rules by exporting oil to Iran and Cuba and using a “shadow fleet” that employs technology to hide tankers’ locations (The Washington Times, subscription).

The backdrop: “The announcement of the blockade comes as U.S. lawmakers are set to vote on House and Senate war powers resolutions to require congressional authorization for military action against Venezuela,” the Journal reports.

• In addition, a recent cyberattack has “gridlocked” the administrative systems of Venezuela’s state-run oil firm, PDVSA (Reuters, subscription).
• Venezuela has accused the U.S. of being behind the attack.

The impact thus far: “At least six very large crude carriers, VLCCs, that were scheduled to load crude at Venezuelan ports in the next two weeks have made U-turns, according to ship monitoring [service] TankerTrackers.com.”