Trump meets with oil executives at the White House on Friday, seeking investments in Venezuela

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is meet­ing with oil ex­ec­u­tives at the White House on Fri­day in hopes of se­cur­ing $100 bil­lion in in­vest­ments to re­vive Venezuela’s abil­i­ty to ful­ly tap in­to its ex­pan­sive re­serves of pe­tro­le­um — a plan that rides on their com­fort in mak­ing com­mit­ments in a coun­try plagued by in­sta­bil­i­ty, in­fla­tion and un­cer­tain­ty.

Since the U.S. mil­i­tary raid to cap­ture for­mer Venezue­lan leader Nicolás Maduro on Sat­ur­day, Trump has quick­ly piv­ot­ed to por­tray­ing the move as a new­found eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty for the U.S., seiz­ing three tankers car­ry­ing Venezue­lan oil, say­ing the U.S. is tak­ing over the sales of 30 mil­lion to 50 mil­lion bar­rels of pre­vi­ous­ly sanc­tioned Venezue­lan oil and will be con­trol­ling sales world­wide in­def­i­nite­ly.

It’s al­so part of a broad­er push by Trump to keep gaso­line prices low. At a time when many Amer­i­cans are con­cerned about af­ford­abil­i­ty, the in­cur­sion in Venezuela melds Trump’s as­sertive use of pres­i­den­tial pow­ers with an op­ti­cal spec­ta­cle meant to con­vince Amer­i­cans that he can bring down en­er­gy prices.

The meet­ing, set for 2:30 p.m. EST, is cur­rent­ly set to oc­cur be­hind closed doors, ac­cord­ing to the pres­i­dent’s dai­ly sched­ule. “At least 100 Bil­lion Dol­lars will be in­vest­ed by BIG OIL, all of whom I will be meet­ing with to­day at The White House,” Trump said Fri­day in a pre-dawn so­cial me­dia post.

Trump is set to meet with ex­ec­u­tives from 17 oil com­pa­nies, ac­cord­ing to the White House. Among the com­pa­nies at­tend­ing are Chevron, which still op­er­ates in Venezuela, and Exxon­Mo­bil and Cono­coPhillips, which both had oil projects in the coun­try that were lost as part of a 2007 na­tion­al­iza­tion of pri­vate busi­ness­es un­der Maduro’s pre­de­ces­sor, Hugo Chávez.

The pres­i­dent is meet­ing with a wide swath of do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies with in­ter­ests rang­ing from con­struc­tion to the com­mod­i­ty mar­kets. Oth­er com­pa­nies slat­ed to be at the meet­ing in­clude Hal­libur­ton, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Sin­ga­pore-based Trafigu­ra, Italy-based Eni and Spain-based Rep­sol.

Large U.S. oil com­pa­nies have so far large­ly re­frained from af­firm­ing in­vest­ments in Venezuela as con­tracts and guar­an­tees need to be in place. Trump has sug­gest­ed on so­cial me­dia that Amer­i­ca would help to back­stop any in­vest­ments.

Venezuela’s oil pro­duc­tion has slumped be­low one mil­lion bar­rels a day. Part of Trump’s chal­lenge to turn that around will be to con­vince oil com­pa­nies that his ad­min­is­tra­tion has a sta­ble re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela’s in­ter­im Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, as well as pro­tec­tions for com­pa­nies en­ter­ing the mar­ket.

Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, En­er­gy Sec­re­tary Chris Wright and In­te­ri­or Sec­re­tary Doug Bur­gum are slat­ed to at­tend the oil ex­ec­u­tives meet­ing, ac­cord­ing to the White House. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by JOSH BOAK | As­so­ci­at­ed Press