‘Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America,’ Trump said.
The Trump administration is tightening the net around Venezuela’s oil exports, saying that the country stole American property and that its governing regime is illegitimate.
The “illegitimate Maduro regime is using oil from these stolen oil fields to finance themselves, drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping,” President Donald Trump said in a Dec. 16 post on Truth Social.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller likewise said on X that the “tyrannical expropriation” of American oil companies’ investments in Venezuela was “the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.”
What is the basis for these claims of stolen property and what is at stake in this escalating conflict?
In 2007, the Venezuelan government under then-leader Hugo Chávez seized the country’s last remaining foreign-controlled crude oil assets, situated in the country’s Orinoco Belt. The territory contains the world’s largest crude oil reserves.
American oil majors including Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, together with the United Kingdom’s BP, France’s Total, and Norway’s Statoil all had investments under existing contracts with the Venezuelan government to develop the site.
Venezuela under Chávez “blew those contracts up,” Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at The Price Futures Group, told The Epoch Times.
“I think President Trump has a right to be upset.”
Seizing Oil Assets
Venezuela nationalized its oil reserves in 1976, taking control of American oil assets.
“A lot of people ask, ‘What’s the difference between Venezuela and Saudi Arabia and the Middle Eastern countries that all did the same thing?’” Flynn said. “Those countries actually paid compensation.”
In the 1970s, for example, Saudi Arabia’s government took control of Arabian American Oil Company from Exxon, Chevron, Mobil, and Texaco. Other countries that seized assets from Western oil companies in the 1970s included Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Algeria, and Nigeria.
The United States took no action against those countries at the time, taking the position that nations had the right to control their own natural resources. In return, however, the countries generally compensated or agreed to compensate oil companies to some degree for the value of their shares, investments, and contracts.
The oil companies that were impacted by Venezuela’s asset seizure filed compensation claims in U.S. and international courts, seeking approximately $60 billion in damages in total. Courts have upheld these claims.
Most recently, in January, the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes supported a 2022 decision by a U.S. federal court that Venezuela must pay $8.5 billion to ConocoPhillips.
“Venezuela has a documented history of seizing U.S.-owned oil assets, including equipment, facilities, and contractual interests, and then refusing to pay the compensation ordered by international courts,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told The Epoch Times. “President Trump is correct that Venezuela stole assets belonging to U.S. oil companies.”
Venezuelan regime leader Nicolás Maduro has responded that the United States is trying to remove him from power in order to take control of the country’s oil supplies, which were nationalized nearly two decades ago, raising allegations of American colonialism in Latin America.
But Maduro’s claim to legitimacy as Venezuela’s president is also being challenged. In 2024, it was widely reported that Venezuelans voted overwhelmingly in favor of Maduro’s opponent, Edmundo González, to be their next president.
Maduro claimed victory regardless and was able to hold on to the presidency due to support from state security forces.
“Maduro clearly lost the 2024 presidential election and has no right to claim the presidency,” the U.S. State Department said in a Jan. 10 statement while announcing sanctions targeting Maduro and his allies.
