Trump Claims Control Over Venezuela’s Oil Revenues Following Maduro’s Capture

U.S. President Donald Trump has announced that Venezuela’s interim authorities will transfer between 30 million and 50 million barrels of “high-quality” sanctioned crude oil to the United States, following the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces over the weekend.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, Trump said the oil would be shipped directly to U.S. ports at market prices, with proceeds personally overseen by him to ensure they “benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.”

The announcement comes days after U.S. forces detained Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Caracas and flew them to New York to face federal drug-related charges.

Trump instructed Energy Secretary Chris Wright to implement the oil transfer “immediately,” as Washington prepares for high-level discussions with leading U.S. energy firms. Executives from Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil are expected at the White House later this week to discuss multibillion-dollar investments in Venezuela’s oil sector.

Trump also indicated that the U.S. would temporarily oversee governance in Venezuela until a political transition is secured. He warned that a “second and much larger attack” could be authorised if the country’s stability is threatened.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Trump compared the Venezuela operation with the Iraq war, arguing that past interventions failed because the U.S. did not retain control over oil resources. “We’re going to keep the oil, we’re going to rebuild their broken-down oil facilities, and this time we’re going to keep the oil,” he said.

Venezuela, which holds more than 300 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, has seen production fall from 3.5 million barrels per day in the late 1990s to roughly 800,000 barrels today due to alleged mismanagement, corruption, and infrastructure decay, according to energy analytics firm Kpler.

Trump said major U.S. energy companies would now be mobilised to “spend billions of dollars” repairing Venezuela’s oil infrastructure. “We are going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, fix the badly broken oil infrastructure and start making money for the country,” he added.