Last March, Venezuela’s two most prominent opposition leaders transmitted a video message to Houston, appealing to one of the largest and most influential annual meetings of global energy titans.
“Venezuela represents the greatest untapped opportunity in the world,” said Edmundo González Urrutia, the former ambassador widely seen as the rightful winner of the nation’s disputed 2024 presidential election. Then, his running-mate and architect of the opposition campaign, María Corina Machado, came on screen. Soon there would be a “successful, secure and open society” in the nation that holds the largest petroleum reserves on Earth, she told the oil and energy company executives and government officials who had gathered for S&P Global’s CERAWeek.
It is not clear whether the video did much to enhance the lure of investing in Venezuela for the energy companies, some of which are still owed billions of dollars for the upending of their operations in the nation amid political turmoil nearly two decades ago. The dissidents had no power to make good on their promises—González was in Spain, and Machado, who would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize later that year, was in seclusion in Venezuela. Both were living under threat of arrest from the government of President Nicolás Maduro.
But soon, the oil industry was hearing the same message from a different source. According to POLITICO, President Donald Trump’s administration summoned executives from Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips to a meeting in Washington in November to gauge their interest in returning to Venezuela once Maduro was gone. POLITICO’s sources described the oil companies as decidedly unenthusiastic, in light of both their history with Venezuela’s political instability and the surfeit of less risky opportunities they enjoy in the current market.
The prior outreach to the oil industry provides crucial context to Trump’s assurances that the United States’ dramatic raid and capture of Maduro on Jan. 3 would be followed by an oil-fueled rebuilding of the Venezuelan economy. Trump’s rosy forecast has led some to characterize the Maduro operation as a gift to the industry that helped bankroll the president’s return to the White House. But industry experts say oil companies have reason to view the Venezuela opportunity more as a leftover holiday white elephant gift than as a coveted prize.
Trump “seems to have the idea that he can just sort of throw the country open and the companies will come flooding back,” said Samantha Gross, director of the Brookings Institution’s Energy Security and Climate Initiative. “It’s true that there’s no resource risk there—we know the resources are there—but the political risk and the financial risk are huge.”
On Wednesday, multiple publications reported that Trump is set to meet with executives of several major oil companies at the White House on Friday to discuss Venezuela.
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