Trump promises oil companies ‘total safety’ in Venezuela as he urges them to invest billions | Donald Trump
Donald Trump promised oil giants “total security, total security” in Venezuela after US forces ousted Nicolás Maduro from power, persuading them to invest $100 billion in the country’s infrastructure.
At a roundtable press conference at the White House on Friday afternoon attended by more than a dozen oil executives, including the leaders of Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhilips, the US president doubled down on claims that Maduro’s arrest offers American oil companies an unprecedented opportunity to extract oil.
Many of the executives expressed support for the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela last weekend and hinted they were ready to invest.
Analysts have expressed skepticism that oil companies will invest large sums of money as quickly as Trump suggests. Earlier this week, the president said production in Venezuela could be increased within 18 months.
“We will put out numbers like few people have ever seen in terms of oil,” he said on Friday, emphasizing that the United States would benefit from lower energy prices. “Venezuela will be very successful, and the people of the United States will benefit greatly.”
Trump said the investment would come from oil companies, not the federal government. Earlier in the week, he suggested that US taxpayers could finance his investments.
“The plan is for them to spend, meaning our giant oil companies will spend at least $100 billion of their own money, not the government’s money,” Trump said. “They don’t need state money, but they need state protection and state security.”
Trump warned the assembled executives if they were not interested in rebuilding efforts: “There are 25 people who are not here today who would be willing to take your place.”
While the president offered them “complete security,” he also suggested that some of the existing oil companies did not need help from the US government. “These are people drilling for oil in some pretty challenging places,” he said. “I would say a few of these places make Venezuela look like a picnic.”
In brief statements, for many the first public statement since Maduro’s capture, oil executives expressed their desire to rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure with assurances from the U.S. government.
“Chevron has been a part of Venezuela’s past, we are absolutely committed to its present, and as a proud American company, we look forward to helping it build a better future,” said Mark Nelson, vice president of Chevron, the only major U.S. company currently exporting Venezuelan oil on a regular basis.
Nelson said the company currently has 3,000 employees across four different joint ventures in Venezuela and has the capacity to “essentially increase our interest in those joint ventures by 100%, effective immediately.”
Exxon’s CEO, Darren Woods, said the company expects “significant changes” in Venezuela’s legal and commercial environment for the company to reinvest in the country. “Investments cannot be made today,” he said.
“We are confident that with this administration and President Trump working hand in hand with the Venezuelan government, these changes can be implemented,” Woods said.
ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance echoed the cautious optimism, saying “there is an opportunity to move quickly and restore the quality of what has been lost in Venezuela over the last 25 years.”
Lance also noted that ConocoPhillips is Venezuela’s largest non-government lender and that the country owes the company $12 billion. Although Trump assured the company he would get its money back, “we’re going to start on a level plate.”
“We’re not going to look at what people lost in the past because it was their fault. He was a different president. We’re going to make a lot of money, but we’re not going back,” he said.
Venezuela’s oil reserves are said to be the largest in the world. While the country’s oil industry boomed in the late ’90s and early 2000s, then-Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez reasserted state control over the industry in the mid-2000s. In the years since, oil production in the country has fallen dramatically as infrastructure aged and investment dried up.
Although Maduro is on trial in US federal court on charges of “narcoterrorism”, Trump is enthusiastic about reopening Venezuela to the American oil industry. The White House on Wednesday said it plans to control Venezuelan oil “indefinitely” and will sell billions of dollars worth of recently seized crude oil.
The history of the last two decades has shown that foreign intervention can have an impact on a country’s oil production, but with mixed and unstable results.
There is a global glut in oil. Average US gas prices it’s currently about 25 cents lower than last year.
