US President Donald Trump has been clear on his intentions about Venezuela as its president stands trial in New York on drug charges.
Trump has said he will oversee Venezuela and control its oil revenue for years, with the first step being reinstalling US oil companies, who were kicked out in the 1970s when the country nationalised its reserves.
In what the New York Times described as a wide-ranging, two-hour interview, the paper said Trump also appeared to lift a threat to take military action against Venezuela’s neighbour Colombia. Trump invited Colombia’s leftist leader, whom he had previously called a “sick man”, to visit Washington.
“Only time will tell” how long the US will oversee Venezuela, Trump said. When asked by the newspaper if it would be more than a year, he said: “I would say much longer.
“We will rebuild it in a very profitable way,” Trump said of Venezuela, to which he sent troops to seize President Nicolás Maduro in a night raid on January 3.
“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.”
Trump added that the US was “getting along very well” with the government of the interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, a longstanding Maduro loyalist who had served as the ousted leader’s vice-president.
Greenland, Cuba, Mexico and Colombia continue to receive mixed signals about their own fates.
“We’ll worry about Greenland in about two months,” Trump said on Monday, immediately correcting himself: “Let’s talk about Greenland in 20 days.”
US media ABC News and CNN on Wednesday reported that the Trump administration was demanding that Venezuela cut ties with China, Iran, Russia and Cuba before it would be allowed to resume oil production.
The White House declined to confirm or deny the reports, which cited unnamed sources.
Trump has previously taken issue with Chinese investment in the region and claimed, incorrectly, during his inauguration speech last year that China was in control of the Panama Canal.
The Guardian in the UK reported two weeks after the US airstrikes in northwest Nigeria they were aimed at Islamic State fighters, but questions remain over the specific group that was targeted and the operation’s impact.
In the aftermath of the strikes, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform that “ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians” were hit with “numerous perfect strikes”.
Pressure has eased on Trump to explain the US attack in Nigeria since global attention has shifted to the brazen Venezuelan action.
Threat to Colombia dissipates
The New York Times said its reporters were permitted to sit in during a phone call between Trump and Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, on condition that the contents of the call were off the record.
In a post on social media, Trump said: “It was a great honor to speak with the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who called to explain the situation of drugs and other disagreements that we have had. I appreciated his call and tone, and look forward to meeting him in the near future.”
Petro described the call, his first with Trump, as cordial.
On Sunday, Trump had threatened to carry out military action against Colombia, calling Petro “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States, and he’s not going to be doing it very long”.
The Times said Trump’s phone call with Petro lasted about an hour and “appeared to dissipate any immediate threat of US military action”.
Trump’s use of force in Venezuela has made some members of his own Republican Party wary, after he long criticised US military ventures abroad. The Senate is due to consider a resolution on Thursday to block Trump from taking further action without congressional authorisation.
Republicans, who control the Senate with 53 seats, have defeated several such measures since Trump began military action around Venezuela late last year, but the most recent vote in November was a close 49-51 after two Republicans backed it. Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican co-sponsoring the resolution, said he had spoken to at least two additional Republicans, who are now “thinking about it”.
Oil economy
Trump has said the US intends to “run” Venezuela.
Venezuela, with the world’s biggest proven oil reserves, has become impoverished in recent decades, with millions of people fleeing abroad in one of the world’s biggest migration crises.
Washington and the Venezuelan opposition have long blamed corruption, mismanagement and brutality by the ruling Socialist Party. Maduro blamed the economic damage on US sanctions.
Several senior US officials said on Wednesday that the US should control Venezuela’s oil sales and revenues indefinitely to restore the country’s oil industry and rebuild its economy.
Trump is scheduled to meet the heads of major oil companies at the White House on Friday to discuss ways of raising Venezuela’s oil production. Representatives from the top three US oil companies — Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron — would be present, according to a source familiar with the planning.
The companies, all of which have experience in Venezuela, have declined to comment.
Fox News reported that the country’s deputy president, JD Vance, suggested the US would control the country through its oil reserves.
“We control the energy resources, and we tell the regime, you’re allowed to sell the oil so long as you serve America’s national interest, you’re not allowed to sell it if you can’t serve America’s national interest,” Vance said.
His comments were realised when the US intercepted and confiscated an oil shipment from Venezuela headed for Russia.
Trump has also made clear that all those who received oil from Venezuela, including China and Canada, would be subject to a deal the US accepted.
How Trump’s plan to take the oil may backfire
The Financial Times reported that most Venezuelan oil is extra-heavy and highly viscous, requiring blending with lighter hydrocarbons (such as naphtha) to be transported and exported.
The country’s oil infrastructure is also ageing and underinvested. Years of underfunding, mismanagement and lack of access to international capital have left facilities in disrepair.
US and international sanctions, with domestic political instability and poor governance, have severely limited Venezuela’s ability to attract investment and maintain production.
This means the electricity grid in Venezuela would have to refurbished, roads and ports built, as well as specialised oil refineries constructed, before mining operations could attempt to extract mass oil reserves underground.
With blackouts worsening an already bleak situation, particularly in provinces outside the Venezuelan capital, which can go 20 hours a day without power, it suggests either the US or oil companies would have to invest billions of dollars over many decades before hydraulic gas extractors could extract mass oil reserves.
But if Trump is able to increase Venezuela’s oil output from 1-million barrels a day, or less than 1% of global demand, to its previous highs of about 3-million barrels, he would bring US domestic production to about 14-million barrels. This represents about one-third of the 40-million barrels output of countries in the Opec+ alliance.
The Guardian expressed doubt about whether Trump will be able to reignite Venezuela’s beleaguered oil industry after decades of underinvestment and corruption.
The president has promised that US oil companies will return to the region to spend billions upgrading its infrastructure and growing its production. But the companies — including Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips — are widely reportedly to be wary.
China’s response
China’s official Xinhua news agency called the US attack “naked hegemonic behaviour”.
“The US invasion has made everyone see more and more the fact that the so-called ‘rules-based international order’ in the mouth of the United States is actually just a ‘predatory order based on US interests’,” the state-run agency said.
It argued that China had more right to invade Taiwan and, like the US, expected no consequences.
Taiwan, in particular, has been facing growing pressure from Beijing. China last week encircled the island in its most emboldened show of force to date, showcasing Beijing’s ability to cut off the island from outside support in a conflict.
Europe, meanwhile, has been muted in its condemnation of the US’s military operation in Venezuela. A few notable exceptions are Spain, the Netherlands and Norway. The former has acted without its EU partners, condemning the US’s actions alongside a group of Latin American countries.
French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen at least referred to international law, while emphasising that they shed no tears for the end of Maduro’s regime.
Others, such as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, strangely asked if the US’s actions were legal. Worse still, Trump-friendly Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni defined this act of external military intervention as legitimate self-defence against narco-trafficking.
