The U.S. seizure of a massive oil tanker offshore of Venezuela this week represented a brazen escalation of the Trump administration’s repeated military incursions in the area. It’s also a broader sign of the increasing involvement of the U.S. in South America’s petroleum politics.

The U.S. paces the world in oil and gas production, but President Trump’s new national security strategy—the so-called “Trump corollary”—emphasizes greater U.S. control of the Western Hemisphere, including much more influence over South America, which increasingly leads the globe in new oil output growth. Almost everything the Trump administration is doing in South America—from pressuring Venezuela to a $20 billion Argentina bailout to defending Guyana’s territorial waters—is at least related to the black gold

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