Oil industry officials met with senior Trump administration officials at the White House on Friday as President Donald Trump pledged a forthcoming “deal” with oil companies to access Venezuela’s crude oil reserves.
The meeting included representatives of major oil companies and Trump’s top energy and international officials. The White House discussion comes as the Trump administration says U.S. oil firms are eager to invest in the oil-rich South American nation following the Trump team’s removal of its leader, Nicolás Maduro, on Saturday.
The administration is “going to cut a deal with the companies” they are “going to allow to go in,” Trump said Friday. “We’ll probably do that today or very shortly thereafter,” he told the crowd. “We’re dealing with the country, so we’re empowered to make that deal, and you have total safety, total security.”
Trump posted on social media prior to the meeting, “The largest Oil Companies in the World are coming to the White House. … Everybody wants to be there. It’s too bad that the Ballroom hasn’t completed because, if it were, it would be PACKED.” A big factor in the U.S. involvement in Venezuela, Trump said, will be “the reduction of Oil Prices for the American People.”
Trump took a moment at the start of the event to survey the progress on the ballroom construction and invited the “fake news” in the room to check it out as well. “We’re ahead of schedule on the ballroom and under budget,” he said.
Trump then turned to praising his team for their work in Venezuela and urging oil companies to seize the opportunity. The president said Thursday that the world’s biggest oil companies had pledged to invest at least $100 billion to rebuild Venezuela’s oil sector.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former oil and gas executive, is leading private sector engagement in the wake of Maduro’s ouster, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday. Wright also met on Wednesday with oil executives in Florida.
“They’re eager about these opportunities,” Leavitt said Wednesday of oil companies. “And Secretary Wright is a very well knowledgeable guy when it comes to oil and energy, and he’s the perfect man for the job.”
Wright, as well as Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller were among the administration officials in attendance.
Trump praised both Burgum and Wright as “fantastic” and said he had hired Wright on Burgum’s recommendation.
“I wanted Doug for that job — energy,” Trump said. “And Doug said, ‘No, sir, there’s a man named Chris Wright.’ I said, ‘Who the hell is Chris Wright?’ He said, ‘He’s the most talented oil man anywhere in the world.’”
An industry roster shared by the White House included representatives from Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Continental, Halliburton, HKN, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Trafigura, Vitol Americas, Repsol, Eni, Aspect Holdings, Tallgrass, Raisa Energy and Hilcorp.
Industry representatives included Continental Resources founder Harold Hamm, Chevron’s Mark Nelson, Exxon CEO Darren Woods and Ryan Lance of ConocoPhillips.
“I think it’s in the best interest of these companies, and frankly, society as a whole, for the industry to be interested in understanding what the opportunity represents,” Woods said.
His company takes a long-term view in investments, Woods said, noting that Exxon’s assets in Venezuela had been seized twice since the 1940s. “So you can imagine to reenter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we’ve historically seen here and what is currently the state,” he said.
The Trump administration announced this week that the U.S. government has begun marketing Venezuelan crude on the global marketplace “for the benefit of the United States, Venezuela, and our allies.”
Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said Friday’s closed-door meeting proves that “Trump’s violent imperialism is all about handing billionaires control over Venezuela’s oil.”
As “fossil fuel tycoons meet to divide the wealth of Venezuela, U.S. taxpayers may be set to shoulder an enormous amount of the risk of drilling and exporting the dirty crude oil,” Slocum said.
