President Trump suggested Wednesday that the US will oversee Venezuela for at least a year following the Jan. 3 arrest of the South American country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, on federal drug and weapons charges.
“We will rebuild it in a very profitable way,” Trump told the New York Times in a lengthy interview. “We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil. We’re getting oil prices down, and we’re going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need.”
The president initially said “only time will tell” when asked how long the US will have a direct say in Venezuela’s affairs, but when reporters suggested various periods of time up to a year, Trump admitted: “I would say much longer.”
Trump also did not say when new elections in Venezuela might take place after he endorsed Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, as the head of the Caracas government rather than opposition leader María Corina Machado.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has insisted that such a vote happen as the final step in transitioning Venezuela out of 25 years of left-wing authoritarian domination that has sapped the country’s wealth.
Trump did not say Wednesday whether he has spoken to Rodriguez since Maduro’s arrest, but “Marco speaks to her all the time.”
“I will tell you that we are in constant communication with her and the administration,” the president said, adding that the current Venezuelan government is “giving us everything that we feel is necessary.”
“They’re treating us with great respect,” Trump emphasized. “As you know, we’re getting along very well with the administration that is there right now.”
Earlier Wednesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the US would “indefinitely” control sales of Venezuelan crude oil, explaining: “Instead of the oil being blockaded, as it is right now, we’re gonna let the oil flow … to United States refineries and around the world to bring better oil supplies, but have those sales done by the US government.”
A day earlier, Trump had vowed that Venezuela’s authorities would hand over between 30 million and 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil to the US and that he had directed Wright to execute the sale.
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Trump added the crude would be shipped to the US, sold at market prices and placed under American control to be used for what he described as the benefit of both countries.
In an interview with NBC News Monday, Trump suggested it could take 18 months for the US petroleum industry to get production operations in Venezuela fully up and running, adding: “I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money.
“A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent, and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue,” he said.
The president is expected to meet with executives from Chevron, Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips to discuss potential investments, though analysts have cautioned that the scale and cost of reviving Venezuela’s oil industry and infrastructure after years of neglect are likely to make the White House project a hard sell.
