Title: What Happens to Venezuela's Oil

[MUSIC - Marden Hill: Hijack]

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we turn to the Trump administration's latest moves and interests in the Venezuelan oil industry. We'll do that New York-related focus later. Right now, the Trump administration's latest moves and interests in the Venezuelan oil industry and how it might affect the United States and Venezuela. As CNBC describes it today, President Donald Trump said interim authorities in Venezuela will turn over, turn over, between 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States.

They report Trump said that the oil will be sold at market price and the money will be controlled by me, this is a Trump quote: "The money will be controlled by me to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States." Also in his press briefing on Saturday, following the US strike and the capture of Maduro and his wife, Trump made clear his intentions for expanding oil extraction. He said this.

President Trump: 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, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.

Brian: A little background, Venezuela is reported to have the largest crude oil reserves in the world and was once one of the biggest global oil producers. A few decades ago, the country produced more than 3 million barrels a day, according to NPR. Today, Venezuela produces about 1 million barrels a day or roughly 1% of global oil output. For comparison, the US produces about 13 million barrels a day, 13 times as much as the traditional oil country of Venezuela.

Reviving Venezuela's oil industry after decades of disinvestment would likely take many years and billions of dollars, as the president said in that clip. Oil prices are down, having fallen more than 20% in the past year. That could prove to make it a hard sell for American companies to decide investment is worth their while. Revitalizing another country's oil industry might be a hard sell to the American people.

Meanwhile, the US is continuing to seize oil tankers coming from Venezuela. This is another development today. This morning, the US seized, what they call, a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic after "chasing the Venezuela-linked vessel across the ocean as it headed toward Europe." That's a quote from POLITICO. Apparently, this was allegedly, according to the United States, one of those tankers that was taking sanctioned oil, which was not supposed to be sold to Russia, toward Russia.

Joining us now to talk about the future of Venezuela's oil industry, where the US oil companies will even get involved and provide a bit of historical context to all this is Rebecca Elliott, New York Times reporter, covering the intersection of energy and politics. Her latest articles say reviving Venezuela's flow of oil will not come easily or cheaply, and that one US company, Chevron, could reap the biggest rewards. Rebecca, welcome to WNYC. Thank you for coming on.

Rebecca: Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

Brian: Let's start on this quote from President Trump yesterday that Venezuela would be providing 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil to the US, and he pledged to use proceeds from the sale of this oil "to benefit the people of both countries." Are you familiar with that deal and how it would work?

Rebecca: Yes. It's really a remarkable statement from the President, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright reiterated those plans this morning at an energy conference in Florida, going even farther, actually, in saying that the US planned to control the sale of Venezuela's oil indefinitely. The White House has said it reached a deal with Venezuela's interim government to this effect, though we have not had public confirmation yet from the leadership in Caracas.

Brian: You write, "Venezuela is widely believed to have the world's largest reserves of crude oil, and for a time, the country exploited its resources with aplomb. In 1997, it pumped almost 5% of the world's oil." Can you just put that in perspective for us? How big of a deal was 5% and who was profiting?

Rebecca: Venezuela used to be a very big player in the global oil market. At the time in the late '90s, as you reference, there were quite a number of international oil companies, household names that many of our listeners probably recognize, Exxon, Chevron, and the like, producing oil in Venezuela alongside the state-owned oil company, PDVSA. The country's oil output has declined significantly since then and is now, I think, as you said, only around 1% of global oil supply.

Brian: Two decades ago, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's president at the time, in the Maduro mode, or really Maduro's more in the Chávez mode, he was nationalizing parts of the country's oil industry, you write, forcing foreign investors to accept smaller stakes in projects without compensating them. What did that moment look like for US oil companies, and what changed under Chávez to this day?

Rebecca: A couple of US oil companies decided to leave in the mid-2000s when then-president Hugo Chávez was partly nationalizing Venezuela's oil industry. ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips said, "No, thank you," and the Venezuelan government seized their assets, and those companies have been pursuing claims valued in the billions against Venezuela's government for years, largely unsuccessfully. They've had a very hard time collecting on those claims. Chevron, which is the second-largest US oil company, decided to stay and has continued to pump oil in Venezuela, such that today it is the only major US oil company with an ongoing presence in the country.

Brian: Even that arrangement was looking a little shaky this time last year, you report. Why was Chevron allowed to stay in Venezuela if Chávez was trying to nationalize the industry as much as he could?

Rebecca: If we go back to the 2006 timeframe, oil companies were essentially given a choice. Venezuela wanted its state oil company, PDVSA, to have a majority stake in projects. These were projects jointly financed by the state oil company and international players. Chávez's government said, "You know what? We need to have majority control." Exxon and ConocoPhillips said, "No, thank you," but Chevron saw some level of opportunity in staying. Part of that had to do with the nuances of their deal in one particular field, but it basically made a bet that it made more sense to stay longer term.

Brian: Why did the US government allow Chevron to stay? My understanding is that that's the only Western oil company with the US government authorization to export oil from Venezuela. There's Venezuela permission on the one side, with Chávez trying to nationalize as much as he could, and then there's the US trying to crack down on Chávez's Venezuela, withdrawing its authorization for oil companies to work there, except Chevron. How come?

Rebecca: Chevron's position in Venezuela has been tenuous, as you note. The Trump administration has kind of gone back and forth on whether Chevron ought to have permission to continue operating in the country. Early last year, the President even said, "You know what? We're revoking your permission, Chevron." There is a fierce lobbying effort on Chevron's part last year, and the President reversed course.

Brian: Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Rebecca: Go for it.

Brian: Go ahead. You go.

Rebecca: All of the details about the thinking there and why the President changed his mind, we're continuing to explore that. One of the big arguments has been that it makes sense to continue to have some US presence in Venezuela, and this is arguments from folks who want to see Chevron stay.

Brian: With Rebecca Elliott, New York Times reporter, covering the intersection of energy and politics here on the day after President Trump announced that the US is going to get 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil from Venezuela to be sold at market price. He said the money will be controlled by me to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States. Explain a little more about that quote. Listeners, we'll take some of your calls in a minute, 212-433-WNYC, and texts 212-433-9692. We have a climate change-related question on this that we'll take a caller on in a second. Do you understand from the President's statement yesterday that the United States will be taking oil from Venezuela or buying oil from Venezuela?

Rebecca: The President indicated that this oil would be sold at market prices, but that the US government would maintain control over the proceeds. It is still unclear as of this morning what exactly that structure might look like, and even whether Caracas, the leaders in Venezuela, have agreed. The White House says that they have reached a deal, but we still don't have public confirmation from the interim government yet.

Brian: Mook in Charlotte, North Carolina, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mook.

Mook: Hi, Brian. Hi, Rebecca. I just want to ask a simple question, which is, does anybody actually want to keep the oil in the ground? Like are there environmental groups in Venezuela who want to keep the oil in the ground, or are European nations thinking about a program, like they do for deforestation, where they pay countries to preserve their resources and not exploit them? I just wanted to just explore the environmental angle of this and see if people actually want to keep the resource in the ground. Thank you so much.

Brian: Thank you for raising it that way. I'll have a follow-up question after you answer Mook's. Rebecca?

Rebecca: Mook, that's a very good question, particularly because not all oil is created equal. As you may know, Venezuela's oil is particularly heavy and dense and carbon-intensive to produce. Yes, I would say there are certainly concerns about the relative environmental harm that comes from producing oil in Venezuela versus somewhere like the United States that has lighter, more viscous oil.

I will say that there are a lot of refineries in the United States and elsewhere that were built many decades ago, when places like Venezuela were producing more of this heavy oil. These facilities are configured to run on heavier crude. To this day, there remains considerable appetite in the oil market for the kind of oil that Venezuela produces, though, as you note, the environmental considerations are real. Certainly, many environmental groups are particularly worried about ongoing production of heavy crude.

Brian: You actually answered the follow-up question that I was going to ask about the nature of the oil from Venezuela compared to oil from elsewhere. It is actually a more carbon-producing, more climate-polluting kind of oil than from a lot of other places. Has that affected its marketability anywhere, or as Mook was asking, EU sanctions or, let's say, just refusal to purchase it based on environmental concerns?

Rebecca: That's a very good question. For the last several years, though, these US sanctions on Venezuela have restricted the trade of this oil to such an extent that I don't know if we know the answer, if that makes sense. The vast majority of Venezuela's oil, because of US sanctions, has been going to China, with a very small amount being sent to the United States and refineries along the Gulf Coast via Chevron, which, as we've discussed, has US authorization that is unique to continue operating in Venezuela.

Brian: As people around the US try to understand, why is he doing all of this again? What's in it for the United States? Some of it is money, obviously, from these kinds of transfers of oil and sale of oil, with the US as at least a middleman in these, the way it's being described, but also to block Venezuelan oil from going to places where the United States doesn't want it to go. There are sanctions on Russia, which a lot of Americans from left to right support because of Ukraine and other abuses.

Some of these tankers that the US has been targeting, and the one that they say was approached, if not seized, in the North Atlantic under a Russian flag in the last day, this seems aimed at stopping Venezuelan oil from going to Russia and maybe to China, I don't know. Do you have an understanding of what that part of this is about?

Rebecca: I think one thing to keep in mind is that oil is a commodity. If it cannot flow to one place, it will make its way to market at a certain price somehow.

Brian: A black market.

Rebecca: Exactly. That is how Venezuela has been exporting most of its oil for several years now. The partial blockade that the US has put in place to prevent vessels from entering and exiting Venezuela has been designed to interrupt this, as you call it, a black market. One of the tankers that US forces have been pursuing was not actually full of oil, but we just learned this morning that the US had boarded this vessel in the North Atlantic.

Brian: Here's a text from a listener that says, "When US oil companies were controlling the oil of Venezuela, they did little to nothing to help the people of Venezuela, which is probably why they elected someone who nationalized the oil industry. Why would anyone believe that the US would now be helping them by taking what Trump calls his oil?" Do you think that's historically accurate, that before Chávez, when US oil companies were controlling a lot of the oil of Venezuela, that they did little to nothing to help the people of Venezuela? We're still thinking a lot about how the economy, including the oil economy, has gone downhill under Chávez and Maduro. What about when US companies were in more control, if you know?

Rebecca: That piece of history, while very interesting and a great question, is outside of the bounds of my expertise, though I do think it's important to keep in mind how central oil is as a source of revenue to Venezuela's government, to the economy there. The inability to move as much oil out of the country has had a very significant effect on the economy there.

Brian: One more history question from Carol in Manhattan. Carol, you're on WNYC with Rebecca Elliott, who reports on energy and politics for The New York Times and has been covering the Venezuela situation from the oil perspective. Hi, Carol.

Carol: Yes, hello. It's my understanding that the Koch brothers, Charles being alive, and the Heritage Fund are the reason why Trump, who is receiving huge amounts of money from them, has made the crude oil from Venezuela the only recipient of Venezuelan oil and used in Texas refineries. The state and the slush fund that exists between the Koch brothers, the Heritage, and the Trump organization is reason enough to precipitate what happened in Venezuela.

Brian: Are you also saying that they're connected to Chevron in particular, as opposed to other US oil companies, which aren't having this advantage?

Carol: Yes.

Brian: Anything on that, Rebecca? Then we're out of time.

Rebecca: I can't speak to that specifically, though I will say that a large share of the US oil industry was really taken aback by the events of Saturday when US forces seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and when the President later made a number of assertions about US oil companies returning to Venezuela. This came as a big surprise to a lot of folks.

Brian: Rebecca Elliott, energy reporter for The New York Times, thank you very much for joining us today with all this context.

Rebecca: Thank you so much for having me.

Copyright © 2026 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.