Politico: Trump Admin asking US oil industry to return to Venezuela, but no takers yet

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The Trump administration is asking U.S. oil companies if they’re interested in returning to Venezuela once leader Nicolás Maduro is gone, four people familiar with the discussions told POLITICO.

And so far, the answer is a hard “no.”

The administration’s outreach to the industry, previously unreported, is the latest sign the White House is dreaming of a post-Maduro future for Venezuela — and how the world’s oil markets are both helping and hindering that goal.

The markets, glutted with supply and with prices at nearly five-year lows, are giving President Donald Trump an unusually free hand to tighten military pressure on the South American OPEC member, much the way they largely shrugged off U.S. and Israeli missile strikes on Iran in June. But those prices are also way too low to entice companies to take the risk of pouring huge investments into the crumbling Venezuelan oil facilities that former strongman Hugo Chávez seized decades ago, industry officials and analysts said.

The U.S. benchmark oil price was around $56 a barrel Wednesday afternoon, the lowest since January 2021. That means Trump has only limited reason to worry that an attack on Venezuela would send gasoline prices spiraling upward — but it also means U.S. oil companies have better investment options elsewhere.

“There has been the genesis of an outreach with the industry on the potential of reentering Venezuela,” one person familiar with the discussion said. “But frankly, there’s not a lot of interest from the industry, in light of lower oil prices and more attractive fields globally.”

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The U.S. effort, led by the State Department, has also gotten assistance from Evanan Romero, a former executive at the Venezuelan state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela who now works as a consultant in Houston, a person in the industry said.

Romero told POLITICO that the Trump administration’s outreach included brokering a meeting in Washington in late November, led by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, among Exxon, ConocoPhillips and representatives of a Venezuelan opposition group to which Romero belongs. The discussion centered on the possibility of the two oil majors returning to the country.

Romero, who did not attend the meeting but was given a readout from opposition group members, described the meeting as “positive” and said Wright’s presence was “very, very helpful.” He said Exxon and ConocoPhillips aired concerns about the debt they are owed from their past Venezuela operations, and the Venezuelan representatives floated the opportunity to take control of additional fields to compensate for the debt.

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Romero said that Wright encouraged the companies “to get to an understanding and solve their outstanding problems along the way,” but made clear the Trump administration would like to see more Venezuelan crude flowing to U.S. refineries.

“‘We need those barrels,’ — that’s an important message from the government,” said Romero.

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Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Weatherford International and Baker Hughes were all operating in Venezuela in the early 2000s when Chávez tried to force them to give majority stakes of their projects to Petróleos de Venezuela. Venezuela seized the assets of companies that resisted.

Richard Goldberg, a former White House official who helped conceive of and stand up Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council, said it “would make sense” for the administration to reach out to companies “given the current environment.”

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