WASHINGTON, WILLEMSTAD - President Trump's newest sanctions attempting to curb some $11 billion of crude exports from Venezuelan state-oil company PDVSA (or Petroleos de Venezuela S.A.) to the United States this year has many world leaders worried about their international impact ranging from rapidly rising oil prices to new stress on debt payments owed by Caracas, but few are watching the potentially volatile waters just off Venezuela in the Caribbean where already long-simmering economic and legal tensions between suppliers and PDVSA tankers which aren't paying their bills could give way to an outright piracy situation as more and more servicing companies seize oil-laden tankers docked in Curaçao and other Caribbean island ports until the balance is paid.

An explosive Bloomberg report begins by detailing an increasingly common scenario which sets a precedent on which western nations and firms could expand the U.S.-led economic war on Petroleum of Venezuela:

Laden with 400,000 barrels of Venezuelan oil, the Icaro sits in the azure waters of Curaçao. It’s been there more than a month, and it’s not going anywhere until state-owned oil company PDVSA pays its bills.

The Icaro has become an unlikely but telling symbol of Venezuela’s woes. And it shows how even before the U.S. sanctions-imposed Monday, PDVSA was facing trouble getting its oil delivered to customers around the globe. That could worsen as the regime looks to offset the loss of its U.S. market

Companies doing business with PDVSA — from fuel suppliers to mechanics to systems techs to tow-boat operators — often find themselves between a rock and a hard place when they don't get paid for their services, on the one hand seeking any means possible to obtain payment yet still wanting to stay in business with one of the world's largest oil producers and exporters. Increasingly they're getting desperate enough to risk severing their relationship with the Venezuelan oil giant altogether by turning to Caribbean courts to obtain the right to seize oil aboard docked or transiting vessels, a trend given new impetus based on this week's escalating events. 

Now that the White House has called for "peaceful transition of power" away from the Maduro regime, and with companies sensing the likelihood of a coming storm of unrest, civil war, or potential external military intervention, companies are scrambling to secure collateral by force. “You put a lien on a cargo to make sure that when you get a court judgment, there will be something there you can sell to obtain what’s owed to you,” one Curacao-based lawyer working on the Icaro case told Bloomberg. “That might be your only chance to get paid.”

Multiple companies have now followed U.S. company ConocoPhillips' lead after it won a key victory in Dutch Caribbean courts last year which resulted in recouping a $2 billion arbitration award, according to Bloomberg. Conoco was able to see the extensive litigation through based on having first obtained a legal writ to detain 12 Venezuelan oil tankers when they passed through the Caribbean. 

The Dutch Caribbean has become ground zero for such aggressive legal methods given that PDVSA operates terminals in Curaçao, Bonaire, and Aruba to store and re-export crude oil to the United States and Asia, and at the same time Dutch law and courts have set a low threshold for holding non-paying companies accountable by allowing legal means to go after assets.