President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet will meet with oil company chief executives Friday at the White House to discuss plans for them to enter Venezuela and drill, four people familiar with the plans said.
Besides Trump, the meeting would include Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, said a person familiar with the plan who was granted anonymity to discuss the scheduled event before a White House announcement. Wright is in Miami at an energy investor conference, where he is expected to meet with oil executives.
The people who spoke to POLITICO would not confirm which companies would attend Friday's meeting.
The White House gathering would be a significant step toward fulfilling Trump’s desire to have oil companies revitalize Venezuela’s moribund crude production. The industry overall has so far blanched at the idea of spending billions of dollars to drill in a politically unstable country where the economy has been in free fall for two decades, but is floating ideas for what guarantees the government could make to entice it to return.
One form of reassurance of stability for the industry could include a timeline for restoring a democratically elected government to Caracas — something that so far has not ranked high among Trump’s stated priorities.
“Oil companies will be looking for security guarantees. They would also want a political timeline from the White House,” said one of the people familiar with the plan. “What is the expectation here of when will there be a transition to an election which restores a government that respects the rule of law and will not be seizing American assets?”
The White House did not immediately respond to questions. Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich said Wright “remains in close contact with U.S. oil companies” and will “meet with several of them” Wednesday in Miami.
The industry is slowly coming to grips with the new reality facing Venezuela, home to the largest oil reserves in the world but on a political knife’s edge after the U.S. military on Saturday captured leader Nicolás Maduro. Trump has also threatened Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro’s second-in-command, who now sits atop the government there.
The White House also said Tuesday it will sell Venezuelan oil that the U.S. has seized from the state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela.
"I am pleased to announce that the Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America,” Trump said on Truth Social. “This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America.”
Even a move so seemingly small could have broader geopolitical implications, said Andrew Lipow, head of the oil market analyst firm Lipow Oil Associates. Diverting that much heavy Venezuelan oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast would displace Canadian crude oil — potentially driving Canada to focus more on supplying oil to China.
“It’s bad news if you’re a Canadian producer seeking access to Gulf Coast markets,” Lipow said, noting that most Venezuela crude has gone to China. “Ironically, if Canadian crude doesn’t go to a refinery in the U.S., it might end up going to China. It would be a reshuffling of supply with the U.S. replacing China as customer for Venezuelan oil.”
Terry Anderson, president and CEO of the Canadian oil company ARC Resources, said discussions on Venezuelan crude displacing Canadian exports were “very premature,” echoing Prime Minister Mark Carney’s reassurances earlier Tuesday that his country’s crude is lower-risk.
“It’s not magical that Venezuela is going to be able to turn the corner and add 500,000 to a million barrels a day,” Anderson said at the Goldman Sachs conference in Miami. He added that expected growth in Canada’s oil sands may also offset any growth in Venezuelan exports.
While Trump has pitched an American-led revival of Venezuela’s oil sector, a bulk of operations there belongs to companies headquartered outside the United States. Financing agencies such as the U.S. Export-Import Bank may also struggle to issue loans to lure American businesses over credit risk concerns in Venezuela.
That has led the administration to widen the list of companies involved in discussions about Venezuela. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has framed Venezuela’s oil sector as drawing “dramatic interest from Western companies.” U.S. oil majors, meanwhile, have largely hesitated to make sweeping declarations about their futures in the country.
“People are pragmatic enough to recognize you've got a company on the ground that's literally keeping the lights on,” said an industry source who is familiar with Venezuela and was granted anonymity to discuss the fluctuating situation. “Trying to bring a company back into a place like Venezuela — that's not easy and that doesn't happen overnight.”
Leaning on non-U.S. companies that have for years operated in Venezuela would amount to a recalibration of Trump’s “America First” posture. Last year, Trump canceled licenses that had enabled companies such as Italy’s Eni, Spain’s Repsol and India’s Reliance Industries to operate in Venezuela, while issuing a special exception for Chevron.
Few companies want to publicly commit to reentering a situation with significant security, political and investment risk, said Geoffrey Pyatt, who led the Biden administration’s energy office at the State Department. He said the companies whose licenses Trump scrapped — some of which have sizable U.S. footprints — provide the most direct route for enhancing American interests and stabilizing Venezuela’s economy.
“They're already there. They know the ground. They have their relationships,” he said. “The nationality of their management is less important than their orientation in the same direction as U.S. policy.”
James Bikales contributed to this report.
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