President Donald Trump said that American oil companies were prepared to tackle the difficult task of entering Venezuela and investing to restore production in the South American country, an announcement that came just hours after Nicolás Maduro was captured and removed by U.S. forces.
"We’re going to have our very large U.S. oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country," Trump said on Saturday.
Chevron is the only American major currently operating in Venezuela’s oil fields that produce heavy crude used by U.S. Gulf Coast and other refineries. Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips, among others, had storied histories in the country after their projects were nationalized nearly two decades ago by former President Hugo Chavez. The American Petroleum Institute, the largest U.S. oil trade group, said on Saturday it was monitoring the emerging situation.
Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute in Houston, said that Chevron is immediately positioned to benefit the most from any potential oil opening in Venezuela. Still, he said that other U.S. oil companies will be paying close attention to political stability and wait to see how the operational environment and contract framework unfold.
"The company that probably will be very interested in going back is Conoco, because they are owed more than $10 billion, and it’s unlikely that they will get paid without going back into the country," he said. Exxon could also return, but is not owed as much money, he added.
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