President Donald Trump has announced plans to commandeer Venezuela’s oil sector and sell its oil to other nations as payback for what he described as the nation’s betrayal and theft of U.S. oil assets.
“We’ll be selling large amounts of oil to other countries,” Mr Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Saturday.
He made the announcement during a news conference outlining the aftermath of “Operation Armour Shield,” the codename for the mission that captured President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.
“We are going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Mr Trump said in a national broadcast on Saturday.
Mr Trump vowed revenge on the foreign oil sector, accusing Venezuela of forcing out Western oil companies that helped build its energy industry.
“We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive, and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us,” Mr Trump said during a news conference.
He suggested the takeover was payback for Venezuela’s betrayal and theft of U.S. oil assets.
“Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets, and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars,” Mr Trump said. “They took all of our property.”
Mr Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, had systematically sidelined Western energy companies with a nationalisation agenda that favoured only local operators with the state-run oil firm, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).
Chevron was the only U.S. oil company that stayed back in Venezuela after successfully negotiating to become a minority partner in PDVSA-led joint ventures.
Venezuela has the largest oil reserve, estimated at 300 billion barrels, which nearly quadrupled the size of America’s reserve and accounted for about 20 per cent of global reserves.
Mr Maduro and his wife were both ferried to the U.S. and were standing trial for multiple charges, including narcotics trafficking. The Trump administration alleged Mr Maduro was the ringleader of a drug cartel, Cártel de los Soles, which constantly transported the cocaine to the U.S.
