President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the interim authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 million and 50 million barrels of “high-quality,” sanctioned oil to the U.S.
The move comes after U.S. forces on Saturday captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, hauling them to New York City to face criminal drug charges.
Trump said the oil will be sold at market price, and he will control the proceeds to ensure it is “used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!”
The oil will be transported directly to unloading docks in the U.S. via storage ships, the president said.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has been tasked with executing the plan “immediately.” The announcement comes as America’s oil titans are set for high-stakes meetings with Trump at the White House to discuss the future of Venezuela’s oil industry. Companies like Chevron, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil are expected to meet with Trump later this week to discuss the possibility of investing billions of dollars to get the country’s operations back up and running.
Following strikes on the capital and Maduro’s subsequent capture, Trump said the U.S. will run Caracas, Venezuela, until a safe transition can occur, warning he was “ready to stage a second and much larger attack” on Caracas if needed.
In an interview with MS NOW host Joe Scarborough Tuesday, Trump said the difference between the disaster in Iraq and the recent action in Venezuela was that former President George Bush “didn’t keep the oil.”
“‘We’re going to keep the oil,'” Scarborough said, quoting Trump. “‘We’re going to rebuild their broken-down oil facilities, and this time we’re going to keep the oil.'”
Venezuela holds more than 300 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, nearly quadruple those of the U.S.
Though the country in the late 1990s was capable of pumping about 3.5 million barrels a day, mismanagement, corruption and the rising cost of extraction caused production to fall to roughly 800,000 barrels a day, according to energy analytics firm Kpler.
Trump said he plans to mobilize major U.S. oil companies to invest billions in fixing Venezuela’s broken oil infrastructure.
“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,” Trump said.