U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would let American oil companies go into Venezuela to tap its massive crude reserves after the U.S. military seized its leader, Nicolas Maduro, in a quick overnight operation.
The U.S. military carried out a series of airstrikes on Venezuela's capital, Caracas, early on Saturday. Maduro and his wife were captured and flown to New York City, where they face drug-trafficking and weapons charges.
"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 told a news conference in Florida.
Trump also said that "the embargo on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect."
Washington imposed economic sanctions on Venezuela in 2017, followed by oil sanctions two years later.
Venezuela produces just under a million barrels of crude a day, according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and sells most of it on the black market at steep discounts.
Trump claims Caracas is using oil money to finance "drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping."
At the start of his second term in 2025, he ended licenses that had allowed multinational oil and gas companies to operate in Venezuela despite the sanctions, with U.S. company Chevron the only one to receive an exemption.
Chevron operates four oil fields in Venezuela in partnership with state-owned PDVSA and its affiliates.
Washington has also imposed a total blockade on sanctioned tankers going to and from Venezuela.
Venezuelan territory contains about 17% of the world's oil reserves, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2023, but is far from being a leading producer after years of mismanagement and corruption.
Venezuelan oil is of lower quality and is mostly processed into diesel or byproducts such as asphalt, rather than gasoline. The U.S. has refineries around the Gulf of Mexico specifically designed to handle it.
"The United States is doing just fine without Venezuelan oil," Stephen Schork, an analyst at consulting firm the Schork Group, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) last month, pointing to political reasons instead.
