Over the weekend, following the capture of leader Nicolás Maduro, Trump indicated that the U.S. would run Venezuela's oil industry — along with the rest of the country. He said that U.S. firms would take it over.
Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he spoke with oil companies before and after Maduro's capture, and "they want to go in so badly."
Asked which companies Trump spoke with, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, "All of our oil companies are ready and willing to make big investments in Venezuela that will rebuild their oil infrastructure, which was destroyed by the illegitimate Maduro regime."
"American oil companies will do an incredible job for the people of Venezuela and will represent the United States well," Rogers said in a statement to The Hill.
An official said Trump spoke with multiple firms but did not name them.
Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves — enough for 303 billion barrels, as of 2023. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the country also has "significant" natural gas reserves.
"The fact that Venezuela has over 300 billion barrels of reserves is kind of tantalizing to oil producers," said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.
However, he noted there's a lot that a company would have to deal with in order to go into Venezuela.
"You need to consider what's happening on the ground, with respect to security, how are you going to staff up … with personnel with the right expertise to go back into the country, especially as many of the local Venezuelan population who did have the expertise have left the country. And then after that, you have to get your personnel down there just to assess the conditions and what repairs are needed before you even start producing additional volumes of oil," Lipow said.
Richard Nephew, who was a State Department official during the Biden and Obama administrations, said that among the first questions that need to be answered for energy companies are who is even running the country.
"If a U.S. oil company wants to fly someone down in a helicopter and they land at a helipad, will they be allowed to go and inspect oil and gas infrastructure? What security forces will let them do that and will any contracts that they sign with any government representative be honored if there is still an open question as to who actually has authority?" said Nephew, now a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy.
Before the U.S. captured Maduro, one major U.S. oil corporation, Chevron, was operating in Venezuela.
The company did not say whether it planned to expand its operations in the wake of the Trump administration's actions.
"Chevron remains focused on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets," said spokesperson Bill Turenne in an email.
In decades past, companies including Exxon and Mobil, which eventually merged, also operated in Venezuela, as did ConocoPhillips. However, Venezuela's government took control of its oil industry and the companies exited in 2007.
Read more at TheHill.com.
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