Trump promises oil executives ‘total safety’ if they invest in Venezuela after Maduro ouster

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Fri­day called on oil ex­ec­u­tives to rush back in­to Venezuela as the White House looks to quick­ly se­cure $100 bil­lion in in­vest­ments to re­vive the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to ful­ly tap in­to its ex­pan­sive re­serves of pe­tro­le­um.

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 tankers car­ry­ing Venezue­lan oil, and 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.

Trump used the meet­ing with oil in­dus­try ex­ec­u­tives to pub­licly as­sure them that they need not be scep­ti­cal of quick­ly in­vest­ing in and, in some cas­es, re­turn­ing to the South Amer­i­can coun­try with a his­to­ry of state as­set seizures as well as on­go­ing U.S. sanc­tions and decades of po­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty.

“You have to­tal safe­ty,” Trump told the ex­ec­u­tives. “You’re deal­ing with us di­rect­ly and not deal­ing with Venezuela at all. We don’t want you to deal with Venezuela.”

Trump added: “Our gi­ant oil com­pa­nies will be spend­ing at least $100 bil­lion of their mon­ey, not the gov­ern­ment’s mon­ey. They don’t need gov­ern­ment mon­ey. But they need gov­ern­ment pro­tec­tion.”

The pres­i­dent said the se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tee would come from work­ing with Venezue­lan lead­ers and their peo­ple, in­stead of de­ploy­ing U.S. forces. He al­so said the com­pa­nies would “bring over some se­cu­ri­ty.”

Trump urges Big Oil to take the plunge

Trump played up the po­ten­tial for ma­jor oil com­pa­nies to strike big, while ac­knowl­edg­ing that the oil ex­ec­u­tives were sharp peo­ple who were in the busi­ness of tak­ing risk, a qui­et nod to the re­al­i­ty that he’s ask­ing for big in­vest­ment in Venezuela at a mo­ment when the coun­try is tee­ter­ing and eco­nom­ic col­lapse is not out of the ques­tion.

Trump wel­comed the oil ex­ec­u­tives to the White House af­ter U.S. forces ear­li­er Fri­day seized their fifth tanker over the past month that has been linked to Venezue­lan oil. The ac­tion re­flect­ed the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the U.S. to ful­ly con­trol the ex­port­ing, re­fin­ing and pro­duc­tion of Venezue­lan pe­tro­le­um.

It’s all 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 White House said it in­vit­ed oil ex­ec­u­tives from 17 com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Chevron, which still op­er­ates in Venezuela, as well as 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.

Venezuela might need le­gal changes to at­tract oil in­vest­ments

While some wild­cat­ters and oth­er com­pa­nies ex­pressed en­thu­si­asm for go­ing in­to Venezuela, oth­ers spoke with a de­gree of care­ful­ness about the le­gal and po­lit­i­cal bar­ri­ers that still ex­ist.

“If we look at the com­mer­cial con­structs and frame­works in place to­day in Venezuela, to­day it’s un-in­vestable,” said Dar­ren Woods, the Exxon­Mo­bil CEO. “And so sig­nif­i­cant changes have to be made to those com­mer­cial frame­works, the le­gal sys­tem, there has to be durable in­vest­ment pro­tec­tions and there has to be change to the hy­dro­car­bon laws in the coun­try.”

Oth­er com­pa­nies in­vit­ed in­clud­ed Hal­libur­ton, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Sin­ga­pore-based Trafigu­ra, Italy-based Eni and Spain-based Rep­sol as well as a vast swath of do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies with in­ter­ests rang­ing from con­struc­tion to the com­mod­i­ty mar­kets.

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 that the U.S. would help to back­stop any in­vest­ments.

Venezuela’s oil pro­duc­tion has slumped be­low one mil­lion bar­rels a day. At the heart of Trump’s chal­lenge to turn­ing that around is con­vinc­ing oil com­pa­nies that his ad­min­is­tra­tion has a sta­ble re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela’s in­ter­im Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez and can pro­vide pro­tec­tions for com­pa­nies en­ter­ing the mar­ket.

Trump, how­ev­er, is con­fi­dent that Big Oil is ready to take the plunge but al­lowed that it’s not with­out risk.

“You know, these are not ba­bies,” Trump said of the oil in­dus­try ex­ec­u­tives. “These are peo­ple that drill oil in some pret­ty rough places. I can say a cou­ple of those places make Venezuela look like a pic­nic.”

Trump sug­gests Chi­na and Rus­sia al­so want Venezue­lan oil

The pres­i­dent al­so of­fered a new ra­tio­nale for oust­ing Maduro and de­mand­ing the U.S. main­tain over­sight of its Venezue­lan oil in­dus­try, say­ing, “One thing I think every­one has to know is that if we didn’t do this, Chi­na or Rus­sia would have done it.”

While Ro­driguez has pub­licly de­nounced Trump and the ouster of Maduro, the U.S. pres­i­dent has said that to date Venezuela’s in­ter­im leader has been co­op­er­at­ing be­hind the scenes with his ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Tyson Slocum, di­rec­tor of the con­sumer ad­vo­ca­cy group Pub­lic Cit­i­zen’s en­er­gy pro­gram, crit­i­cized the gath­er­ing and called the U.S. mil­i­tary’s re­moval of Maduro “vi­o­lent im­pe­ri­al­ism.” Slocum added that Trump’s goal ap­pears to be to “hand bil­lion­aires con­trol over Venezuela’s oil.”

Try­ing to re­store diplo­mat­ic ties

Mean­while, the Unit­ed States and Venezue­lan gov­ern­ments said Fri­day they were ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of restor­ing diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries, and a del­e­ga­tion from the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion ar­rived in the South Amer­i­can na­tion Fri­day.

The small team of U.S. diplo­mats and diplo­mat­ic se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials trav­elled to Venezuela to make a pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ment about the po­ten­tial re­open­ing of the U.S. Em­bassy in Cara­cas, the State De­part­ment said in a state­ment.

Trump al­so an­nounced Fri­day he’d meet next week, ei­ther Tues­day or Wednes­day, with Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do, the leader of Venezuela’s op­po­si­tion par­ty, as well as with Colom­bian Pres­i­dent Gus­ta­vo Petro in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary.

Trump has de­clined to back Macha­do, even as the U.S. and most ob­servers de­ter­mined her op­po­si­tion move­ment de­feat­ed Maduro in Venezuela’s last elec­tion. Trump said fol­low­ing Maduro’s ouster that Macha­do “doesn’t have the sup­port with­in, or the re­spect with­in, the coun­try” to lead.

Trump called on the Colom­bian leader to make quick progress on stem­ming flow of co­caine in­to the U.S.

Trump, fol­low­ing the ouster of Maduro, had made vague threats to take sim­i­lar ac­tion against Petro, de­scrib­ing the Colom­bia leader as a “sick man who likes mak­ing co­caine and sell­ing it to the Unit­ed States”

Trump abrupt­ly changed his tone Wednes­day about his Colom­bian coun­ter­part af­ter a friend­ly phone call in which he in­vit­ed Petro to vis­it the White House.

The seem­ing dé­tente be­tween Petro, a left­ist, and Trump, a con­ser­v­a­tive, ap­pears to re­flect that their shared in­ter­ests over­ride their deep dif­fer­ences.

For Colom­bia, the U.S. re­mains key to the mil­i­tary’s fight against left­ist guer­ril­las and drug traf­fick­ers. Wash­ing­ton has pro­vid­ed Bo­gotá with rough­ly $14 bil­lion in the last two decades.

For the U.S., Colom­bia, the world’s biggest co­caine pro­duc­er, re­mains the cor­ner­stone of its coun­ternar­cotics strat­e­gy abroad, pro­vid­ing cru­cial in­tel­li­gence used to in­ter­dict drugs in the Caribbean. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by JOSH BOAK and AAMER MAD­HANI | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Matthew Daly and Se­ung Min Kim con­tributed to this re­port.