U.S. President Donald Trump said American oil companies will move to invest heavily in Venezuela’s oil sector, hours after Washington announced the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro following U.S. military strikes.
“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 and start making money for the country,” Trump said in a public address on Saturday.
“They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been,” he said.
Cyberattack and U.S. seizures deal double blow to Venezuela’s oil exports | OilNOW
Trump also claimed historic U.S. ownership of Venezuela’s oil industry. “We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive, skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us,” he said. “This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country.”
The comments came after the United States said it captured Maduro during early-morning military strikes in Venezuela on January 3. Trump announced the capture on Truth Social, saying the Venezuelan leader and his wife were flown out of the country as part of what he described as a large-scale U.S. strike.
According to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Maduro has already been indicted and charged in the Southern District Court of New York on counts including “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States.”
Washington has long accused Maduro of running a narco-state and of rigging Venezuela’s 2024 election, which the opposition said it won overwhelmingly.
The developments triggered security responses across the region.
Guyana went on alert Saturday, with President Irfaan Ali convening an emergency meeting of the Defence Board, national security officials and regional commanders, his office said in a brief Facebook post. Ranks from the Guyana Police Force and troops from the Guyana Defence Force were deployed to communities near the border with Venezuela.
At the regional level, Caribbean Community Heads of Government met early Saturday to assess potential implications for neighboring states. Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who has backed the U.S. actions against the South American nation in recent months, said her country played no role in the U.S. operation.
