Donald Trump has laid claim to billions of dollars’ worth of Venezuelan crude this week, which at a stroke has handed the world’s biggest consumer of oil up to 50m barrels – but his ambitions are far greater.
The White House said Venezuela would be “turning over” the nearly $3bn (£2.3bn) of crude stranded in tankers and storage facilities before it is sold on the international market and after that the US plans to control all the country’s oil sales “indefinitely”.
