Trump suggests US taxpayers could reimburse oil firms for Venezuela investment

Donald Trump has suggested US taxpayers could reimburse energy companies for repairing Venezuelan infrastructure for extracting and shipping oil.Trump acknowledged that “a lot of money” will need to be spent to increase oil production in Venezuela after US forces ousted its leader Nicolás Maduro, but suggested his government could pay oil companies to do the work.“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,” the president said.The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, reportedly plans to meet representatives of Chevron, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil at the Goldman Sachs Energy, Clean Tech & Utilities Conference in Miami later this week.Representatives of Trump’s administration are planning to meet executives to discuss increasing Venezuelan production, Reuters reported.The meetings are crucial to the Trump administration’s hopes of getting top oil companies back into the South American nation after its government, nearly two decades ago, took control of US-led energy operations there.The three biggest US oil companies – Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron – have not yet had any conversations with the administration about Maduro’s removal, Reuters reported. This contradicted Trump’s statements over the weekend that he had already held meetings with “all” the US oil companies, before and since Maduro was seized.“Nobody in those three companies has had conversations with the White House about operating in Venezuela, pre-removal or post-removal to this point,” one of the sources told Reuters.The upcoming meetings will be crucial to the administration’s hopes to increase production and exports of heavy, unctuous crude from Venezuela, a former Opec nation that sits atop the world’s largest reserves and whose barrels can be processed by specially designed US refineries.Achieving that goal will require years of work and billions of dollars of investment, analysts say.Venezuela produces on average about 1.1m barrels of oil a day, down from the 3.5m barrels produced in 1999 before a government takeover of the domestic industry.It is unclear which executives will be attending the upcoming meetings, and whether oil companies will be attending individually or collectively.The White House did not comment on the meetings but said it believed the US oil industry was ready to move in to Venezuela.“All of our oil companies are ready and willing to make big investments in Venezuela that will rebuild their oil infrastructure, which was destroyed by the illegitimate Maduro regime,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.Exxon, Chevron and ConocoPhillips did not immediately respond to requests for comment to Reuters.Asked if the administration had briefed any oil companies before the military operation, Trump said, “No. But we’ve been talking to the concept of, ‘what if we did it?’”“The oil companies were absolutely aware that we were thinking about doing something,” Trump told NBC News. “But we didn’t tell them we were going to do it.”He told NBC News it was “too soon” to say whether he had personally spoken to top executives at the three companies. “I speak to everybody,” he said.Trump said hours after Maduro’s capture he expects the biggest US oil companies to spend billions of dollars increase Venezuela’s oil production, after it dropped to around a third of its peak over the past two decades because of underinvestment and sanctions.But those plans will be hindered by lack of infrastructure, along with deep uncertainty over the country’s political future, legal framework and long-term US policy, according to industry analysts.Chevron is the only US major currently operating in Venezuela’s oilfields.Exxon and ConocoPhillips operated in the country before their projects were nationalised by former president Hugo Chávez.The S&P 500 energy index rose to its highest since March 2025 on Monday, as Exxon Mobil rose 2.2% and Chevron jumped 5.1%.