President Donald Trump’s insistence this week that the U.S. can keep at least some of Venezuela’s oil fits a long-standing worldview for Trump, which predates even his first term in office.
His rationale? Might makes right.
In 2015, during his first presidential campaign, Trump ran on a pledge to seize oil from Iraq as a repayment for U.S. occupation of the country. He refined that argument during a 2016 presidential forum and said the United States made a mistake by not laying claim to Iraq’s oil resources.
“We go in, we spend $3 trillion, we lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then … what happens is, we get nothing,” Trump said. “You know, it used to be to the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: Take the oil.”
Three years later, after winning the White House, Trump outlined a similar approach with Syria as Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial control on the country began to weaken. He told a conference of police chiefs in Chicago in 2019 that the U.S. had rights to Syria’s oil because of its intervention in the region.
“We’re keeping the oil,” Trump said. “I’ve always said that — keep the oil. We want to keep the oil, $45 million a month. Keep the oil. We’ve secured the oil.”
At the time, he also suggested that U.S.-based oil majors could become partners in the effort.
“What I intend to do, perhaps, is make a deal with an Exxon Mobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly,” he added.
Major oil companies, however, did not show a willingness to go into Syria at that time, and they also have blanched at similar suggestions this term when it comes to Venezuela, POLITICO has reported.
But the reluctance of the oil industry hasn’t stopped Trump or his subordinates from eying Venezuela’s vast oil resources. During the last presidential campaign, Trump expressed some regret about not taking its oil as Venezuela deteriorated during his first term.
“We would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door,” he told the crowd in June 2023 at a North Carolina GOP gathering.
Trump’s views have hardened since recapturing the White House.
Over the last few months, Trump has taken an increasingly aggressive approach to Venezuela. He’s dispatched a growing armada of troops and warships to the region, which have destroyed about two dozen vessels and killed nearly 100 people suspected of drug trafficking.
Last week, U.S. authorities seized an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast. And this week he ordered a blockade of the South American country.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” he wrote on social media. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
On Wednesday, Trump doubled down on those comments, telling reporters “They took all of our oil and we want it back, they illegally took it.”
It is not clear which land or oil Trump is claiming the U.S. has a right to seize and a White House spokesperson ignored questions seeking clarity about the president’s statements. Trump may be referring to oil production facilities run by oil majors, including Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips, about two decades ago.
On Wednesday, top Trump aide Stephen Miller appeared to lay out a legal strategy for the oil seizure on X, stating that “American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela.”
“Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property,” he wrote. “These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.”
Trump and Miller appear to be referring to the events of 2007, when former President Hugo Chávez partly nationalized his country’s oil industry by forcing contracts with lesser profits on oil production facilities in the country’s Orinoco River basin region. That included projects by oil majors Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP and more. Now, only Chevron continues to produce oil in the country.
Since the U.S. government does not drill for oil, Trump won’t be able to do much without the participation of the major oil companies, said David Goldwyn, who served as the special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs in the Obama administration.
“U.S. governments are often under the misapprehension that they can seize foreign oil or that having even a preferential right is going to benefit the U.S. government,” he said.
“Oil companies tend to view these assets overseas differently,” he added. “They want to know what the fiscal terms are. They want to know that they’re stable. They want to know that the environment is secure.”
That said, the Trump administration likely has legal cover and precedent for capturing sanctioned, stateless oil tankers and claiming their cargo. But insisting the land and oil of a sovereign country is U.S. property is far outside the bounds of the law.
Goldwyn, who is now chairman of the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center’s Energy Advisory Group, noted there is a legitimate legal claim that oil companies or bondholders could bring against Venezuela after the country seized assets under Chávez.
But those claims are fought in courtrooms, he said, because the U.S. has “not used gun boats to collect debts from foreign countries since Teddy Roosevelt’s time and not very successfully then.”
Despite his rhetoric, Trump has never actually taken any oil.
While Trump installed about 500 troops to protect Syria’s oil fields, former President Joe Biden revoked that order not long after taking office in 2021. In Iraq, Trump ultimately ended up focusing on withdrawing troops rather than taking oil. With Trump back in office, several oil majors have signed deals with Baghdad over the last few months.
As for Venezuela, Trump must contend with a Congress that’s increasingly uneasy with his saber-rattling.
Many Democrats have been critical of his actions — calling them a prelude to a war over oil that echoes Iraq. Trying to take oil, which could lead to a dramatic escalation with Venezuelan forces now protecting some tankers, also has elicited pushback from some Republicans.
“When Trump says Venezuela stole oil from the United States, he’s talking about projects by Oil Companies that were nationalized by the government of Venezuela two decades ago,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) wrote on X Wednesday night. “No one campaigned on using our soldiers to overthrow Venezuela to make these Oil Companies whole again.”
This story also appears in Energywire.
