Trump says US oil firms will enter Venezuela after raid

President Donald Trump

President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that American oil companies would be allowed to enter Venezuela to tap its vast crude reserves following a US military operation that seized the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said at a press conference.

Trump added that the embargo on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect, signaling that any trade will be tightly regulated.

In the weeks leading up to the military operation, US forces seized at least two Venezuelan oil tankers, which Washington said were under US sanctions.

Trump also issued a warning to other political and military figures in Venezuela: “What happened to Maduro can happen to them.”

Venezuela, producing about one million barrels of crude per day, has been under US oil sanctions since 2019. Much of its oil has been sold on the black market at steep discounts.

Trump accused the Maduro government of using oil revenue to finance “drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping,” framing the US intervention as part of broader efforts to curb illegal activities.