The new trip placed U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright in Caracas as Venezuela’s oil rules undergo a shift designed to attract foreign investment while the United States adjusts its approach to sanctions and enforcement, an AP report said. Wright arrived Wednesday and planned to meet not only with government officials but also with oil executives during what was described as a three-day visit.
Wright met acting President Delcy Rodríguez at the Miraflores presidential palace, according to the AP account. The meeting served as a public signal that the Trump administration’s engagement with Venezuela’s energy sector is continuing in parallel with the changes the acting president has proposed for the country’s energy law.
Wright told reporters that he brought a message from President Donald Trump. Standing beside Rodríguez with flags behind them, he said, “I bring today a message from President Trump,” and added that Trump was “passionately committed to absolutely transforming the relationship between the United States and Venezuela,” as part of an agenda described by the administration as aimed at bringing the Americas closer on commerce, peace, prosperity, jobs and opportunity for Venezuelans.
Rodríguez, who AP said was sworn into her new role after a Jan. 3 seizure of then-President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, acknowledged that relations with the United States have had “highs and lows.” She said both countries were now working on a mutually beneficial “energy agenda,” and she called for diplomatic and energy dialogue as “appropriate and suitable channels” for the two governments to determine how to move forward.
In the government’s presentation of the law changes, the objective is to create assurance for major U.S. oil companies that have so far hesitated about returning to Venezuela. AP reported that some companies previously lost investments after the ruling party enacted an existing oil-sector law more than two decades ago that favored PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-run oil company.
AP said the new law grants private companies control over oil production and sales and ends PDVSA’s monopoly over those activities as well as pricing. The changes also include a shift in how disputes can be handled, AP said, by allowing for independent arbitration instead of mandating that disagreements be settled only in Venezuelan courts controlled by the ruling party—an approach AP described as important to foreign investors to guard against future expropriation.
Wright described the reform as incomplete, AP said. He told reporters the overhaul was “a meaningful step in the right direction,” but “probably not far and clear enough to encourage the kind of large capital flows” that the United States would like to see in Venezuela, and he planned to visit oil fields on Thursday.
The broader context, AP said, is that Venezuela has long relied on oil revenue as a key lifeblood of its economy, while the United States has maintained a confrontational posture toward the sector during Trump’s first term. AP reported that Trump imposed crippling sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, including locking out PDVSA from global markets as part of an attempt to topple Maduro, and that the pressure contributed to the use of a shadow fleet of unflagged tankers to smuggle discounted crude.
AP also said Trump later ordered a blockade of “sanctioned oil tankers” entering or leaving Venezuela in December, and that U.S. forces began seizing oil tankers off the Caribbean coast. After Maduro’s Jan. 3 ouster, AP reported, the Trump administration set out to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s petroleum products and oversee where the revenue flows, while also lifting broad sanctions—yet continuing tanker seizures, including one AP said occurred this week in the Indian Ocean after it was tracked from the Caribbean Sea.
Wright told reporters that the blockade is “essentially over,” according to AP, and he said the United States is “flowing Venezuelan crude out, selling it at a much higher price than Venezuela was selling it before.” He said revenue is being used in specific projects described as benefiting Venezuelans.