The Nobel Peace Prize winner delivered her presentation via live video to a business conference in Miami attended by US executives and politicians, including President Donald Trump.
“I’m talking about a $1.7 trillion opportunity,” María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s main opposition leader, said last month, weeks after winning the prize for challenging Nicolás Maduro, the country’s autocratic leader.
She highlighted Venezuela’s enormous oil and gas reserves — “Let’s open everything up, upstream, midstream e downstreamfor all companies” — beyond its minerals and energy infrastructure. His message has been constant since earlier this year, when he extolled his country’s “infinite potential” for American companies in a podcast hosted by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
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She found a receptive audience.
The president and his aides have publicly insisted that lethal U.S. military operations around Venezuela and the pressure campaign against Maduro are primarily aimed at protecting Americans from drug trafficking. But Venezuela is not a drug producer, and the narcotics that pass through the country are mostly destined for Europe.
Behind the scenes, government officials have also been focusing intensely on Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.
Their importance is evident in secret negotiations between American officials and Maduro about oil, and in conversations that Trump’s advisors and allies held with Machado and other members of the Venezuelan opposition.
Trump has publicly made clear his interest in controlling Venezuelan reserves. In a speech to Republicans in North Carolina in 2023, four years after supporting efforts to overthrow Maduro in his first term, Trump said: “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken control, we would have had all that oil, everything right next door.”
The role of oil in escalating tensions between Maduro and Trump was highlighted by last week’s dramatic US seizure of a tanker. The vessel was crossing the Caribbean Sea carrying oil destined for Cuba and China. Trump said he would take the charge, although his legal authority to do so is questionable.
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The action represented a sharp escalation in Trump’s months-long campaign against Maduro, which included 25 attacks on boats, with at least 95 people killed — acts that many legal experts say are illegal.
Venezuela and its oil are at the center of two of Trump’s stated national security priorities: dominance of energy resources and control of the Western Hemisphere. The country holds about 17% of the world’s known oil reserves, or more than 300 billion barrels, almost four times the volume of the United States. And no country has a greater presence in the Venezuelan oil industry than China, the superpower whose extensive commercial presence in the Western Hemisphere the Trump administration seeks to contain.
“When President Trump talks about Venezuela and other comparable countries, he always emphasizes the importance of the U.S. having access to these oil resources,” said Francisco R. Rodríguez, a professor at the University of Denver who studies the political economy of Venezuela.
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Trump has repeatedly talked about obtaining oil and other natural resources as a reward for American military interventions abroad. “I always said get the oil” was a recurring phrase in his 2016 presidential campaign.
In his first term, he stated that he would “keep the oil” in Syria because of the presence of American troops. He also said that the United States should have taken oil from Iraq and Libya as payment for military interventions that overthrew those governments.
In 2019, Trump ordered his advisers to make Juan Guaidó, then leader of the Venezuelan opposition, commit to granting the United States access to the country’s oil and to alienating China and Russia if he took power in an initiative supported by Washington, according to a memoir by John Bolton, then national security advisor. Bolton classified the initiative as “a huge exaggeration”.
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Maduro also sees Venezuela’s oil as an important geopolitical tool.
The country’s leaders rely on Chinese oil purchases as a shield against economic sanctions imposed by the first Trump administration and maintained by President Joe Biden. In April, Delcy Rodríguez, vice president of Venezuela, asked Chinese leaders, during a visit to Beijing, for more investment in the Venezuelan oil industry and the purchase of more crude oil. China already accounts for 80% of Venezuela’s oil purchases.
Oil under pressure
In recent months, Trump’s advisers have debated how to gain greater access to Venezuelan oil for American companies, given Maduro’s hostility and the Chinese presence, according to current and former government officials.
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Richard Grenell, special envoy for Venezuela and president of the Kennedy Center, led negotiations aimed at reaching a grand deal with Maduro. The Venezuelan leader made a proposal to Trump that included opening the country’s oil industry to Americans, in addition to limited access granted to Chevron, which operates in Venezuela under a confidential license recently extended by the US government.
Trump rejected the offer after other senior advisers argued that Maduro was untrustworthy and was biding his time. This group, led by Marco Rubio, secretary of state and national security advisor, advocates the forced removal of Maduro. They argue that a conservative, pro-market leader — in this case, Machado — would favor American companies and limit Chinese investment.
Trump suggested to Maduro in a call last month that he step down. Maduro has refused to relinquish power in the short term, despite the build-up of US military forces in the Caribbean and repeated threats from Trump to go beyond attacks on vessels and strike targets inside Venezuela.
The seizure of the tanker and new sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector seek to undermine Maduro’s resistance by showing that the United States is willing to stifle the country’s main source of income, current and former government officials said.
The United States is expected to soon seize more tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, according to American officials. As happened last week, the US government can justify new seizures by citing the history of these oil transport vessels from Iran, which is subject to a stricter sanctions regime than Venezuela’s.
The United States has seized only a handful of oil tankers in recent years. All of these actions were based on the suspicion that Iranian oil was being used to finance the Revolutionary Guard, a branch of Iran’s military that the first Trump administration designated as a foreign terrorist organization, said Edward Fishman, a former State Department sanctions expert.
A few additional seizures of ships carrying Venezuelan oil could lead companies to avoid the country, with subsequent loss of revenue, said Tom Warrick, a former State Department official and oil industry lawyer.
“The Trump administration’s strategy is now clearly aimed at achieving this cash flow,” he said. “Venezuela has a relatively small amount of cash on hand, so losing this tanker starts to hurt quickly.”
Trump has not spoken publicly about helping American companies obtain a bigger share of Venezuelan oil as a goal of this campaign. But he has mentioned it frequently in private conversations, according to people familiar with the matter.
In negotiations this year, US officials discussed with Maduro possible arrangements to remove Chinese and Russian companies from the Venezuelan oil sector and expand the role of American companies.
China has reduced its direct investments in Venezuelan industry in recent years. Maduro has expressed interest in attracting more American investment, U.S. officials said. But he remained adamant about staying in power, and negotiations stalled.
Drilling in times of war
Trump authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela and may decide to violently overthrow Maduro, using the agency as a spearhead, the US Armed Forces or both.
However, many Venezuela experts expect the post-Maduro scenario to be chaotic. Officials from several agencies in the first Trump administration reached this conclusion in war simulations conducted in 2019.
Instability in a post-Maduro Venezuela could hamper the desire and ability of American companies to expand their presence in the country.
No major Western oil company immediately entered Iraq or Libya following US military interventions that toppled governments and sparked civil wars. It took years for larger companies to start operations in these countries. In contrast, Chinese oil companies signed contracts to operate in Iraq’s southern fields during the civil war and generally demonstrate greater risk tolerance in conflict zones.
The appetite of large American companies to enter the Venezuelan sector may depend on whether the US pressure campaign and eventual military operations result in chaos or stability.
“American oil companies operate in very dangerous places, but what they will care about is the financial result,” said Oliver B. John, who served as a US diplomat on economic issues in Gulf Arab countries.
Machado has spoken generally about how he would reshape the sector if he came to power. In a video conversation in June with the Council of the Americas, a business entity based in New York, she stated that she would promote a “privatization process” and that a national agency would open the sector to private investment. The goal would be to bring Venezuela’s oil production to around 3 million barrels per day within 10 years, tripling the current level, according to her.
However, the nationalized industry is popular among Venezuelans for its historical roots, and “privatizing Venezuela’s oil industry would be controversial in many ways,” Rodríguez said.
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