Washington — The US has seized a large oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, President Trump said Wednesday, escalating tensions between the two countries.

Reuters first reported seizure of the oil tanker. The president made the comments during a White House roundtable, saying the tanker was “seized for a very good reason.”

“As you probably know, we just seized a tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, a very large one,” he said. “The biggest ever seized, actually. There’s other stuff going on, so you’ll see it later and you’ll talk to some other people about it later.”

The president did not immediately provide further details about the seizure beyond those remarks Wednesday afternoon.

Mr. Trump threatened to expand the United States’ months-long campaign attacks on alleged drug vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean to land in Venezuela. The US has been steadily building up its military forces in the area, and this week deployed two fighter jets to fly over the Gulf of Venezuela.

“We’re going to start doing those strikes on land as well,” Mr. Trump he told reporters during a cabinet meeting last week, when asked about the administration’s offshore strikes. “You know, the country is much easier… And we know the routes they take. We know everything about them. We know where they live. We know where the bad ones live. And we’ll start that very soon.”