An oil tanker is moored at a dock at the El Palito refinery of the national oil company PDVSA.
Jesus Vargas | Alliance in pictures | Getty Images
President Donald Trump said Tuesday evening that the interim authorities of Venezuela will produce between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil At UNITED STATES in the wake of the dramatic ousting by the United States of the authoritarian leader of the South American country, Nicolas Maduro.
Trump, in a social media poststated that the oil will be sold at market price, “and this money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure that it is used for the benefit of the people of Venezuela and the United States!”
“I asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright “This plan will need to be executed immediately,” Trump wrote. “It will be transported by storage ships and taken directly to unloading docks in the United States.”
Trump said the oil handed over to the United States was “high quality” and “sanctioned.”
US Crude Futures fell 1.3% to $56.39 a barrel following Trump’s announcement.
The announcement comes three days after U.S. forces captured Maduro and his wife in Caracas and took them to New York, where they are charged in a federal case. drug trafficking conspiracy indictment.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Trump plans to meet with representatives of major U.S. oil companies. Chevron, ConocoPhillipsAnd Exxon Mobilewith other national producers, at the White House on Friday “to discuss significant investments in Venezuela’s oil sector.”
Trump said U.S. oil companies would eventually invest billions of dollars to rehabilitate Venezuela’s aging oil production capabilities.
Chevron currently operates in Venezuela, the only American oil company to do so. The assets of ConocoPhillips and Exxon were nationalized by then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in the mid-2000s.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, pleaded not guilty Monday during their arraignment in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
During those proceedings, Maduro told Judge Alvin Hellerstein that he had been “kidnapped” and was a “prisoner of war.”
