STORY: :: San Andres, Colombia
:: December 11, 2025
:: Released December 10, 2025
:: Colombia's Petro condemns the recent seizure of an oil tanker by U.S. forces, describing it as 'oil piracy'
:: Gustavo Petro, Colombian President
"They just seized a ship; it is oil piracy, it is oil. In other words, they are showing why they are doing what they are doing: oil, oil and more oil. But oil is about to die as a driver of economic development for our peoples. So we have to think about another kind of development, what to do. We cannot have the same military power, we cannot have the same financial power, but we can have other kinds of power, and one of them starts here: joining forces."
:: Petro also warned of military escalation in the Caribbean after U.S. attacks on alleged drug boats
"So we are in a second scenario after Gaza, the Caribbean. One hundred dead already, and it could be thousands if they unleash an invasion. They say I am defending a dictatorship, but what I defend and want to defend is life in the Caribbean and the humanity that lives there. We have dealt with dictatorships ourselves, we do not need much help to do that. When people decide to, they free themselves from dictators, and in the Caribbean we have freed ourselves from many dictators."
During his speech at the summit, he said he had told U.S. President Donald Trump that he was attacking countries that had the capacity to help defeat drug trafficking.
Petro claimed that recent bombings in the waters of the Caribbean were driven by a global economic order built on fossil fuels.
Responding to accusations that he supported authoritarian governments, Petro said he sought to defend life and humanity in the Caribbean and argued that people in the region had historically removed dictators on their own, amid ongoing tensions over security, energy and sovereignty in the wider Caribbean basin.
