President Donald Trump talks during ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ about the American capture of Venezuelan dictator Maduro.
President Donald Trump promised a US return to the Venezuelan oil industry after the stunning arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, accusing the country’s socialist government of seizing US energy assets and dismantling an industry built with US investment.
“We built the Venezuelan oil industry with American talent, drive and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us,” Trump said during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.
“Venezuela has unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars,” he added. “They took all our belongings.”
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President Donald Trump said U.S. energy companies will return to Venezuela to rebuild the country’s oil industry. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images/Getty Images)
Trump said U.S. energy companies could play a central role in rebuilding the country’s oil sector.
“We will have our very large oil companies in the United States step in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken oil infrastructure and start making money for the country,” he said.
Once home to major US energy investments, Venezuela has systematically displaced Western oil companies under a nationalization campaign launched by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez. Although Maduro claims to have won re-election to a six-year term in 2024, the US and other international observers say his loyalists stole the election from Edmundo González.
Chevron was one of the few energy titans who negotiated to stay and agreed to operate as minority partners under joint ventures led by the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), rather than leaving the country completely.
Now the only remaining American oil company operating in VenezuelaChevron finds itself in a tension between Washington’s takeover of Caracas and the world’s largest oil reserves.
VENEZUELA HAS THE LARGEST OIL RESERVES IN THE WORLD. HERE’S HOW OTHERS COMPARE
The company declined to comment on the broader safety environment, saying only: “We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.”
Chevron has operated in Venezuela for about a century, but its ability to produce and export oil has been defined in recent years by U.S. sanctions and time-limited permits from the Treasury Department that tightly restrict its activities.
Roughly twice the size of California, Venezuela possesses the the world’s largest proven oil reserves. At an estimated 300 billion barrels – about 20% of the global total and nearly four times US reserves – this amount is dwarfed by that of any other country.
Yet the crisis-ridden economy and ongoing political instability have severely limited the ability to convert these reserves into sustainable production, a dynamic also visible in countries such as Iran and Libya, where unrest, sanctions and deteriorating infrastructure are limiting production despite vast resource wealth.
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An oil pumping station and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. (Reuters; AP)
As the United States considers its next steps, Venezuela’s oil reserves remain both a prize and a paradox—vast in size, but locked behind years of underinvestment, deteriorating infrastructure and political risks that will require billions of dollars and lasting stability to overcome.
