After the U.S. military raid that captured former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump on Friday told oil industry executives the United States would provide security assurances that, in his view, should make investment in Venezuela possible again.
Trump made the pitch during a White House meeting aimed at securing about $100 billion in investment, according to the administration, to help repair Venezuela’s neglected infrastructure and tap the country’s petroleum reserves. The meeting also came as the U.S. seized another tanker linked to Venezuelan oil, extending a campaign to take control of the exporting, refining and production of Venezuelan petroleum.
In a public exchange with executives, Trump urged major companies to “rush” back into Venezuela and framed the moment as an economic opportunity for the United States. He described the U.S. as taking over the sales of what he characterized as 30 million to 50 million barrels of previously sanctioned Venezuelan crude, and he said the U.S. would control those sales worldwide indefinitely.
Trump’s messaging was also directed at investor risk. “You have total safety,” Trump told the executives, adding that they would “be dealing with us directly and not dealing with Venezuela at all.” He also said the companies would bring their own spending rather than relying on government money, telling them: “But they need government protection.”
While Trump used the meeting to reassure executives about those protections, Darren Woods, Exxon Mobil’s CEO, pressed a different concern. Woods said that if companies look at “the commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s un-investable.” He said significant changes would have to be made to commercial frameworks, the legal system, investment protections, and Venezuela’s hydrocarbon laws.
Trump also told executives that any security guarantee would come through working with Venezuelan leaders and their people rather than deploying U.S. forces, and he said companies would “bring over some security.” The president acknowledged the history of state asset seizures, ongoing U.S. sanctions and decades of political uncertainty, but he described the executives’ role as taking calculated risk.
The meeting included Chevron, which still operates in Venezuela, along with ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Singapore-based Trafigura, Italy-based Eni and Spain-based Repsol. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright later told reporters that the companies showed “tremendous interest,” and he said Chevron made a specific pledge.
Wright said it could take 8 to 12 years for Venezuela’s daily output to triple to 3 million barrels a day. He said the long timeline reflected the scale of changes needed to raise production from Venezuela’s current level, which the AP report put below 1 million barrels a day.
Trump offered a further rationale for the Maduro ouster, telling the executives that “if we didn’t do this, China or Russia would have done it.” He also said the White House was working to show it had a stable relationship with Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez, while noting that Rodríguez had publicly denounced Trump and the ouster of Maduro.
Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen’s energy program criticized the meeting, saying the U.S. military’s removal of Maduro amounted to “violent imperialism,” and he said Trump’s goal appeared to be to “hand billionaires control over Venezuela’s oil.” The administration, in turn, said it was exploring restoring diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Venezuela.
U.S. and Venezuelan governments said Friday they were considering the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas after a preliminary assessment by a small team of U.S. diplomats and diplomatic security officials, according to the State Department. Trump also announced he would meet Maria Corina Machado, a leader of Venezuela’s opposition party, next week, while also saying he would meet Colombian President Gustavo Petro in early February, after a phone call earlier this week that invited Petro to visit the White House.