President Donald Trump said the US could reimburse American oil companies for expanding their operations in Venezuela.
“A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent, and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue,” Trump told NBC News in an interview on Monday.
Trump declined to share his estimate of the cost for companies to repair or expand the South American country’s deteriorating oil infrastructure.
Despite Venezuela’s vast oil reserves — estimated at about one-fifth of the world’s total — the country’s output accounts for less than 1% of global daily oil production, because of sanctions, corruption, and what Trump has called “badly broken infrastructure.”
On Saturday, Trump said that the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power would open up these vast reserves. Experts have said that the move could reshape the global energy market, disadvantaging China and Russia.
“They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been,” Trump said in a public address.
Trump’s comments followed an early Saturday raid in which US armed forces and law enforcement struck parts of the capital, Caracas, and captured Maduro and his wife.
In Monday’s NBC interview, Trump said, “Having a Venezuela that’s an oil producer is good for the United States because it keeps the price of oil down.”
Lower oil prices could mean cheaper gas for average Americans, but may also disincentivize the “very large United States oil companies” that Trump said he may subsidize.
Trump added it was “too soon” to say whether he had spoken to executives at Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, America’s three largest oil producers.
The oil market has been under pressure, with crude prices falling 20% last year. A main issue facing the market is an oversupply of global crude because of sluggish demand. It’s a focus of OPEC+, which over the weekend said it will refrain from pumping new oil during the first quarter.
