Trump promises oil companies ‘total safety’ in Venezuela as he urges them to invest billions

Donald Trump promised oil giants “total safety, total security” in Venezuela in an effort to persuade them to invest $100bn in the country’s infrastructure after US forces toppled Nicolás Maduro from power.

At a roundtable press conference at the White House on Friday afternoon with more than a dozen oil executives, including leaders from Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhilips, the US president doubled down on claims that Maduro’s arrest presents American oil companies with an unprecedented opportunity for extraction.

Many of the executives expressed support for the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela last weekend – and hinted that they stood ready to invest.

Analysts have expressed skepticism that oil firms will invest vast sums as rapidly as Trump has suggested they will. Earlier this week, the president suggested production in Venezuela could be boosted within 18 months.

“We’re going to be extracting numbers in terms of oil like few people have seen,” he said on Friday, emphasizing that the US stands to benefit from lower energy prices. “Venezuela is going to be very successful, and the people of the United States are going to be big beneficiaries.”

Notably, Trump said the investment would be coming from the oil companies, not the federal government. Earlier in the week, he had suggested that the US taxpayer might fund their investments.

“The plan is for them to spend, meaning our giant oil companies will be spending at least $100bn of their money, not the government’s money,” Trump said. “They don’t need government money, but they need government protection and government security.”

Trump warned the assembled executives that, if they aren’t interested in rebuilding efforts: “I got 25 people that aren’t here today that are willing to take your place.”

While he offered them “total safety”, the president also suggested some of the oil firms present did not need the US government’s help. “These are people that drill oil in some pretty rough places,” he said. “I could say a couple of those places make Venezuela look like a picnic.”

In brief remarks, oil executives – for many, the first public statements since Maduro’s capture – expressed willingness to rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure with the US government’s reassurances.

Chevron “has been a part of Venezuela’s past, we are certainly committed to its present, and we very much look forward as a proud American company to help it build a better future”, said Mark Nelson, vice-chair of Chevron, currently the only US major that regularly exports Venezuelan oil.

Nelson said the company currently had 3,000 employees across four different joint ventures in Venezuela and that it had the capacity to “increase our liftings from those joint ventures 100% essentially, effective immediately”.

Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, said the company expected “significant changes” to Venezuela’s legal and commercial landscapes in order for the company to reinvest in the country. “Today it’s uninvestable,” he said.

“We’re confident that with this administration and President Trump, working hand in hand with the Venezuelan government, that those changes can be put in place,” Woods said.

The ConocoPhillips CEO, Ryan Lance, echoed the cautious optimism, saying that “there’s an opportunity to be quick, fast and restore the quality of what’s been lost in Venezuela over the last 25 years”.

Lance also noted that ConocoPhillips is Venezuela’s largest non-sovereign credit holder, with the country holding $12bn in debt to the company. Though Trump assured the company that it will get its money back, “we’re going to start with an even plate”.

“We’re not going to look at what people lost in the past, because that was their fault. That was a different president. We’re going to make a lot of money, but we’re not going to go back,” he said.

Venezuela’s oil reserves are reputedly the world’s largest. While the country’s oil industry experienced a boom in the late 90s and early 2000s, the then Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, eventually reasserted state control over the industry in the mid-2000s. In the years since, oil production in the country has fallen drastically as its infrastructure aged and investment dried up.

Though Maduro is being tried in US federal court on “narco-terrorism” charges, Trump has been very enthusiastic about Venezuela opening back up to the American oil industry. On Wednesday, the White House said that it planned to control Venezuela’s oil “indefinitely” and that it would sell billions of dollars’ worth of recently seized crude oil.

History from the last two decades has shown that foreign intervention can have an impact on a country’s oil output, but with mixed and unstable results.

Oil is experiencing a global surplus. Average US gas prices are now about 25 cents lower than last year.