Roughly 50 years ago Venezuela nationalized their oil industry and seized the assets of the oil companies to do so. The oil companies fought back in courts but have never really been compensated for the seizures. Trump has sent them a message, if they want to reclaim their assets and contracts, they have to rebuild the infrastructure of the oil business in Venezuela. I think this is good for US tax payers too, we are not going to be footing the bill.
Trump admin sends tough private message to oil companies on Venezuela
The White House has told companies they must rebuild Venezuela's crude-pumping infrastructure if they want compensation for assets seized by Caracas.
Evana, an oil tanker, is docked at El Palito port in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, Dec. 21, 2025. | Matias Delacroix/AP
By BEN LEFEBVRE, ZACK COLMAN and JAMES BIKALES01/03/2026 02:35 PM EST
American oil companies have long hoped to recover the assets that Venezuela’s authoritarian regime ripped from them decades ago.
Now the Trump administration is offering to help them achieve that aim — with one major condition.
Administration officials have told oil executives in recent weeks that if they want compensation for their rigs, pipelines and other seized property, then they must be prepared to go back into Venezuela now and invest heavily in reviving its shattered petroleum industry, two people familiar with the administration’s outreach told POLITICO on Saturday. The outlook for Venezuela’s shattered oil infrastructure is one of the major questions following the U.S. military action that captured leader Nicolás Maduro.
But people in the industry said the administration’s message has left them still leery about the difficulty of rebuilding decayed oil fields in a country where it’s not even clear who will lead the country for the foreseeable future.
“They’re saying, ‘you gotta go in if you want to play and get reimbursed,’” said one industry official familiar with the conversations.
The offer has been on the table for the last 10 days, the person said. “But the infrastructure currently there is so dilapidated that no one at these companies can adequately assess what is needed to make it operable.”
President Donald Trump suggested in a televised address Saturday morning that he fully expects U.S. oil companies to pour big money into Venezuela.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure and start making money for the country,” Trump said as he celebrated Maduro’s capture.
It’s been five decades since the Venezuelan government first nationalized the oil industry and nearly 20 years since former President Hugo Chávez expanded the asset seizures. The country has some of the largest oil reserves in the world, but its petroleum infrastructure has decayed amid years of mismanagement and meager investment. ^^^ STORY CONTINUES AT THE LINK ABOVE ^^^
