By CP StaffTuesday, January 06, 2026Tugboats mobilize the Crude Oil Tanker President, anchored in Pampatar Bay two years ago in Margarita Island, Nueva Esparta state, Venezuela, on Jan. 19, 2024. | GUSTAVO GRANADO/AFP via Getty Images
President Donald Trump asserted over the weekend that reopening Venezuela and its vast crude oil reserves to American oil companies is a key goal as the United States seeks to “run” the OPEC country, following the U.S. capture of former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
“As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust for a long period of time,” Trump said during a Saturday morning press conference at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. “They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place.”
“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,” he added.
Here are five key facts about the oil industry in Venezuela and its historic involvement with U.S. oil companies.
