Hailing the US military operation to seize Nicolás Maduro as spectacular, extraordinary and “an assault not seen since World War II”, Donald Trump surprised many by making Venezuela’s oil the central focus of his hour-long press conference on Saturday.
The US president made little mention of the “war on drugs” that for months had been his main justification for the military buildup and the strikes on boats that have killed 116 people, instead referring to oil more than a dozen times, even when questions made no reference to it.
Trump’s insistence ended up reinforcing a claim repeatedly made by Venezuela since the escalation began: that he was ultimately seeking to topple Maduro and seize the country’s vast natural reserves.
As he did weeks earlier when announcing a “total blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers, Trump said Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest reserves, had “stolen” oil from the US and that it would now be taken back.
“We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations. And they stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country,” Trump said, echoing almost word for word a post on X by his homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, in mid-December.
Analysts can trace the origins of Trump’s claim – decisions by previous Venezuelan governments to nationalise production – but they argue that the US has no legal claim to Venezuela’s oil.
José Ignacio Hernández, a legal scholar and researcher of Venezuela’s oil industry who works with the consultancy Aurora Macro Strategies, said: “Even if a past government illegitimately expropriated the oil assets of US companies without fair compensation, Venezuela did not steal any oil from the US.”
Other analysts note that US companies never owned the oil or the land in Venezuela. They held exploration concessions, which confer temporary operating rights, not permanent ownership. Under international law and the UN principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources established in 1962, sovereign states have the inherent right to control and dispose of resources within their territory.
US companies have drilled for oil in Venezuela since the early 1900s, and over the past century, firms from other countries joined them, including Italy, France, Spain, China, Russia, the Netherlands and the UK.
In 1943, Venezuela mandated that 50% of profits go to the state, and in 1976 the centre-left president Carlos Andrés Pérez nationalised the industry, creating the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA).
US companies such as Exxon and Mobil, which merged in 1999, and Gulf Oil, now part of Chevron, suffered losses estimated at $5bn but were compensated to the tune of about $1bn each.
Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chávez, took control of the remaining oil operations still run under private arrangements in 2007. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips rejected the new contractual terms and had their assets expropriated. Chevron agreed to remain.
Francisco J Monaldi, the director of the Latin America energy programme at Rice University’s Baker institute for public policy, said: “ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil left, went into international arbitration and won. In the case of ConocoPhillips, they are still owed more than $10bn. So the company is likely to be a key actor in any negotiation to recover that money, probably in part by returning to the country.”
Returning, however, is far from straightforward.
Analysts point out that there has never been an independent audit, made impossible by years of Chavista authoritarianism, to establish precisely how large Venezuela’s reserves are. After years of mismanagement and corruption under Chávez and Maduro, compounded by severe damage from US sanctions, Venezuela’s oil production also falls far short of its potential. Moreover, much of its reserves are “heavy sour” crude, which is harder and more expensive to extract.
The country is now a marginal player, accounting for less than 1% of global production. Monaldi estimates that Venezuela’s current output of just under 1m barrels a day could rise to 4m or even 5m – but doing so would require about $100bn in investment and at least a decade.
“I’m not sure whether they [US companies] will be willing to go back,” he said.
Despite Trump’s claims of oil “theft”, Chevron still holds about 25% of operations in Venezuela. PDVSA controls roughly 50%, with about 10% in joint ventures led by China, another 10% by Russia and 5% by European companies.
During Trump’s first term, the US imposed sanctions banning imports of Venezuelan oil. Joe Biden eased those restrictions in the hope that Maduro would allow a democratic transition after Venezuela’s 2024 election. That election is now widely believed to have been stolen and Trump has reinstated the sanctions. Some analysts argue that the sanctions contributed to preventing Venezuela from paying compensation owed to ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.
Even during sanctions, Chevron never fully suspended its operations, maintaining them at sharply reduced levels. Trump briefly revoked the company’s licence but reversed course in July, ordering that royalties be used not by Maduro’s government but to cover operating costs and pay down Venezuela’s long-standing debt to the company.
“If a transition of power is consolidated and sanctions are lifted, the company that will benefit most is Chevron because it is already on the ground,” Monaldi said. “But that will require substantial investment, because the Venezuelan state companies are effectively broken and have very limited capacity at this point.”
