Oil Companies Will Invest at Least $100 Billion in Venezuela
President Donald Trump announced during a meeting with executives of major oil companies that U.S. oil companies would invest $100 billion to rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure.
Trump revealed details of the plan during his remarks at a roundtable with leaders Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in the East Room.
“Our giant oil companies will spend at least $100 billion of their own money, not government money,” he said.
“They don’t need government money, but they need government protection and government security so that when they spend all that money, it will be there so they get their money back and get a very good return,” he added.
Trump stressed that the investment will be used to rebuild “necessary capacity and infrastructure.”
“Venezuela also agreed that the United States would immediately begin refining and selling up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil, and this would continue indefinitely,” he noted.
Trump further added that American companies built Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, but previous presidents failed to take action after the assets were “stolen.”
“This president is very different from your other presidents,” he said, comparing himself to his predecessors. “They didn’t do anything. They stole it. Some of the people in this room were a little younger when it happened, but not much younger. It wasn’t that long ago.”
“So now we’re doing everything to fix it. Now we’re doing 500 percent, but it’s a long time after the act took place,” he added. “So they stole from us, and it was taken by the socialists and the communists at the time, and Venezuela was doing badly, really badly. And despite all the amount of oil they have, they produce almost nothing,” he added.
Trump also noted that on Thursday Venezuela gave the United States 30 billion barrels of oil, valued at about $4 billion.
Executives from Chevron, Exxon, Conoco Phillips, Continental, Halliburton, HKN, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Trafigura, Vitol Americas, Repsol, Eni, Aspect Holdings, Tallgrass, Raisa Energy and Hilcorp were on hand for the panel discussion.
