Donald Trump stunned allies and critics alike on Saturday by shifting the focus of a dramatic U.S. military operation in Venezuela away from drugs and security and squarely onto oil, repeatedly portraying the seizure of Nicolás Maduro as an act of reclaiming American property rather than a geopolitical intervention.
Hailing the operation to capture the Venezuelan president as “spectacular”, “extraordinary”, and “an assault not seen since World War II”, Trump devoted much of an hour-long press conference to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, mentioning oil more than a dozen times even when reporters’ questions made no reference to energy.
The emphasis marked a striking departure from the “war on drugs” narrative that had dominated U.S. messaging for months, during which Washington justified a military build-up in the Caribbean and strikes on suspected trafficking boats that have killed at least 116 people. Instead, Trump framed the escalation as a rectification of what he described as historic theft.
“Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest oil reserves, stole oil from the United States,” Trump said. “We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations. And they stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country.”
The language closely echoed a post made in mid-December by Trump’s homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, and reinforced a claim long advanced by the Maduro government: that Washington’s ultimate objective was not narcotics interdiction or democracy promotion, but regime change aimed at seizing control of Venezuela’s natural resources.
Legal and energy analysts say Trump’s assertions have little basis in international law. While U.S. oil companies have operated in Venezuela for more than a century, experts stress that they never owned the oil itself.
“Even if a past government illegitimately expropriated the oil assets of U.S. companies without fair compensation, Venezuela did not steal any oil from the U.S.,” said José Ignacio Hernández, a legal scholar and researcher of Venezuela’s oil industry who works with the consultancy Aurora Macro Strategies.
Under international law, including the United Nations principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources adopted in 1962, states have the inherent right to control and dispose of resources within their territory. Foreign companies typically operate through concessions or contracts that grant temporary exploration and production rights, not permanent ownership of land or subsoil resources.
Other analysts note that Trump’s rhetoric conflates corporate losses with national property. “There is a big difference between disputes over compensation and the idea that a country’s oil belongs to another state,” Hernández said.
U.S. firms began drilling in Venezuela in the early 1900s, helping transform the country into one of the world’s leading oil producers. Over time, companies from Europe, Russia and China joined them, including firms from Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK.
In 1943, Venezuela mandated that 50% of oil profits go to the state, a move that influenced resource nationalism across the developing world. Three decades later, in 1976, the centre-left president Carlos Andrés Pérez nationalised the industry outright, creating the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA).
Major U.S. companies such as Exxon and Mobil — which later merged — and Gulf Oil, now part of Chevron, suffered losses estimated at around $5bn each, but they were compensated roughly $1bn apiece. Those settlements, analysts say, undermine claims that Venezuela simply “stole” American assets.
A second wave of nationalisation came in 2007 under Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s mentor and predecessor. Chávez forced the conversion of remaining private oil projects into state-controlled joint ventures. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips rejected the new terms and had their assets expropriated, while Chevron agreed to stay.
Both ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips pursued international arbitration and won. According to Francisco J. Monaldi, director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, ConocoPhillips is still owed more than $10bn.
“That company is likely to be a key actor in any negotiation to recover that money, probably in part by returning to the country,” Monaldi said.
Trump’s repeated references to Venezuela’s oil wealth also obscure the grim state of the country’s energy sector. Although Venezuela is widely cited as holding the world’s largest proven reserves, analysts caution that the true size and accessibility of those reserves remain uncertain.
There has never been an independent audit of Venezuela’s oil reserves, a task made nearly impossible by years of authoritarian rule under Chávez and Maduro. Much of the country’s oil is “heavy sour” crude, which is far more expensive and technologically demanding to extract and refine than lighter grades.
Years of mismanagement, corruption and underinvestment — compounded by U.S. sanctions — have left PDVSA hollowed out. Once producing more than 3m barrels a day, Venezuela now accounts for less than 1% of global output, pumping just under 1m barrels daily.
Monaldi estimates production could eventually rise to 4m or even 5m barrels a day, but only with about $100bn in investment over at least a decade. “I’m not sure whether they [U.S. companies] will be willing to go back,” he said.
During Trump’s first term, Washington imposed sweeping sanctions that banned imports of Venezuelan oil and cut off PDVSA from global financial markets. Joe Biden later eased some restrictions in hopes that Maduro would allow a democratic transition after the 2024 presidential election.
That election is now widely believed to have been stolen, prompting Trump, back in office, to reinstate sanctions. Some analysts argue the sanctions themselves contributed to Venezuela’s inability to pay compensation owed to ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.
Despite the sanctions, Chevron never fully exited Venezuela. The company maintained operations at sharply reduced levels through special U.S. licences. Trump briefly revoked Chevron’s licence earlier this year but reversed course in July, ordering that royalties generated by the company be used not by Maduro’s government but to cover operating costs and pay down Venezuela’s long-standing debt to Chevron.
Today, PDVSA controls roughly 50% of Venezuela’s oil operations. Chevron accounts for about 25%, with around 10% held in joint ventures led by Chinese companies, another 10% by Russia, and about 5% by European firms.
“If a transition of power is consolidated and sanctions are lifted, the company that will benefit most is Chevron because it is already on the ground,” Monaldi said. “But that will require substantial investment, because the Venezuelan state companies are effectively broken and have very limited capacity at this point.”
For critics, Trump’s oil-centric narrative risks confirming Caracas’s long-standing claim that U.S. policy toward Venezuela is driven less by democracy or security than by resource control. By sidelining the drug war rationale and foregrounding oil, Trump may have unintentionally strengthened Maduro’s portrayal of Washington as a neo-imperial power.
Supporters, however, argue that Trump is merely being blunt about strategic interests that have always underpinned U.S. policy. “He’s saying out loud what others prefer to dress up in moral language,” said one former U.S. official who requested anonymity.
What is clear is that Venezuela’s oil — once a symbol of national pride and prosperity — has again become the fulcrum of a major international crisis. Whether Trump’s claims translate into lasting control, renewed investment or prolonged instability will depend not only on military outcomes, but on complex legal battles, sanctions policy and the shattered state of Venezuela’s energy industry itself.
