US oil companies going to Venezuela – Trump

The South American country’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, recently signed legislation inviting foreign investment in Venezuela’s energy sector

US President Donald Trump has said that American oil companies are going to Venezuela in light of the South American country’s latest push to incentivize foreign investment in its energy sector.

In early January, US commandos conducted a raid on the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, abducting President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. The couple was flown to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges, to which both have pleaded not guilty. Trump has since demanded “total access” to Venezuela’s oil.

Speaking during a cabinet meeting on Thursday, the US president said that his administration was “getting along really well” with Venezuelan Interim President Delcy Rodriguez, and the country’s leadership.

“We’re working… on the oil. We have the major oil companies going to Venezuela now, scouting it out and picking their locations,” Trump stated.

Trump’s remarks coincided with the issuing of a general license by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control that authorized the “lifting, exportation, re-exportation, sale, resale, supply, storage, marketing, purchase, delivery, or transportation of Venezuelan origin oil, including the refining of such oil” by companies under certain conditions.

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Also on Thursday, Rodriguez signed the reform to the Organic Hydrocarbons Law with a view to incentivizing private and foreign investment in the country’s decrepit energy sector. Earlier in the day, Rodriguez held a phone conversation with Trump.

Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves at about 303 billion barrels, nationalized US companies’ assets in the 2000s during the presidency of socialist Hugo Chavez. Washington responded by imposing crippling sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry.

The US president has recently urged US energy companies to invest into reviving the sector. However, Exxon CEO Darren Woods has poured cold water on the idea, saying that the South American country is “uninvestable,” given the “commercial constructs and frameworks in place” there at present. He added that “durable investment protections” are the prerequisite to any long-term involvement.

Russia, along with many other BRICS and Global South nations, has strongly condemned the abduction of the Venezuelan president by US forces.

Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia has described Washington’s actions as “international banditry” driven by a desire to gain “unlimited control over natural resources.”