President Donald Trump told top oil industry executives the United States government would guarantee security for companies that assist the administration’s effort to revive the Venezuelan petroleum sector after U.S. forces captured the country’s ex-president.
Speaking in the East Room Friday at the top of a televised sit-down with the energy executives, Trump said his administration would be “making the decision” on which companies to “allow” back into Venezuela and promised his administration would “cut a deal” with those companies.
“We're dealing with the country, so we're empowered to make that deal, and you have total safety, total security. One of the reasons you couldn't go in is you had no guarantees, you had no security. But now you have total security. It's a whole different Venezuela, and Venezuela is going to be very successful, and the people of the United States are going to be big beneficiaries,” he said.
Earlier in the day, the president wrote on Truth Social that “BIG OIL” leaders will invest “at least 100 billion dollars” into Venezuela towards “rebuilding, in a much bigger, better and more modern form, their oil and gas infrastructure.”
He also claimed Washington and Caracas have been “working well together” on rebuilding the Venezuelan oil industry in the days since Venezuelan president Darcy Rodriguez was installed following the snatching-up of longtime leader Nicolas Maduro in an audacious nighttime raid by American commandos last week.
“They don't need government money, but they need government protection and need government security that when they spend all this money, it's going to be there,” Trump said. “So they get their money back and make a very nice return.”
According to the White House, executives from 17 companies were in attendance, including Chevron, the only company that has some current involvement in Venezuela, plus ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. The two latter companies lost control of prior projects in the country when then-president Hugo Chavez nationalized them nearly two decades ago.
The sit-down with oil industry bigwigs comes as the president has sought to recast his administration’s decapitation of the Venezuelan government — a surprise attack that has drawn condemnation from much of the world and raised concerns in the U.S. about whether it violated U.S. laws — as part of his efforts to lower the cost of living for Americans who polling has shown to be weary of his focus on international wheeling and dealing amid unflagging inflation and a slowing job market.
In the wake of Maduro’s shock ouster, Trump claimed the U.S. would be taking over sales of Venezuelan crude across the globe and said the government in Caracas was providing Washington with between 30 and 50 million barrels of formerly sanctioned oil to sell.
While critics have cast the move as a Trumpian do-over of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq — overthrowing the government of an oil-rich nation to install a more U.S.-friendly regime and reap financial benefits — Trump has claimed it would benefit Americans by bringing energy prices down with the aid of cheap oil from the formerly sanctioned nation.
Despite his promise of cheap oil to lower prices for Americans, he may have an uphill climb in convincing executives to throw open their coffers in a country that has been particularly inhospitable for western petroleum concerns over the past decades.
American companies have been wary of signaling any interest in getting back into Venezuela without ironclad contracts and guarantees that would prevent Caracas from interfering, though Trump has said that the U.S. government would assist with guaranteeing any investments while touting his relationship with Rodriguez.
U.S.-based shale oil producers have also cried foul over Trump’s newfound love for foreign oil, which they warn would crater the market for U.S.-produced crude at a time when the president has obsessively pursued re-shoring American industrial capabilities.
American companies have been loath to invest in Venezuela since a wave of nationalization laws that were enacted in the country starting in 1976, dispossessing American companies including ExxonMobile and ConocoPhillips.
Although the companies were compensated for some of their losses by the Venezuelan government, Trump characterized the nationalization process that occurred decades ago as theft of American-owned assets.
He also suggested his administration’s purported takeover of the Venezuelan oil industry was justified by those long-ago developments.
“Decades ago, the United States built Venezuela's oil industry at tremendous expense with American skill, technology, know how and dollars, but those assets were stolen from us, and we had presidents who did nothing about it. This President is much different than your other presidents,” he said.
One of the CEOs in attendance, ExxonMobile CEO Darren Woods, said the country was “uninvestable” without changes to “the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today.”
“There has to be durable investment protections, and there has to be change to the hydrocarbon laws in the country,” said Woods, who also expressed confidence that the Venezuelan government would make those changes “hand in hand” with the Trump administration.
But Woods added his company was “ready to put a team on the ground” to assess the current state of the country’s oil infrastructure “with the invitation of the Venezuelan government and with appropriate security guarantees.”
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