Donald Trump says he’s personally taking control of billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil money.
The president announced late Tuesday night on Truth Social that he’ll be overseeing the sale of between 30 and 50 million barrels of “High Quality, Sanctioned Oil” that Venezuelan authorities are supposedly gifting him.
“This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America,” Trump wrote, adding that he’s directed Energy Secretary Chris Wright to “execute this plan, immediately.”
THE DETAILS: That stockpiled oil could be worth as much as $2.5 billion. Trump claims the proceeds will “benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States”—a promise that’s dubious at best, given everything we know about how this administration operates.
Meanwhile, Wright revealed even more alarming plans at Goldman Sachs’s Energy conference Wednesday morning: the U.S. intends to control Venezuelan oil sales “indefinitely.”
Not just the backed-up reserves—all future production flowing out of Venezuela will be marketed by the U.S. government, with proceeds going into “accounts controlled by the U.S. government.”
“We’re going to market the crude coming out of Venezuela, first this backed-up stored oil, and then indefinitely, going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace,” Wright said.
OF COURSE: Wright also admitted he’s already been in discussions with U.S. oil companies about their “potential return” to Venezuela.
The Latin American nation nationalized its oil in 1976 and seized assets from companies like ExxonMobil under Hugo Chávez. A Trump-controlled Venezuela, however, promises to be far more hospitable to American energy giants.
WHY IT MATTERS: Let’s be crystal clear about what happened here. The Trump administration extrajudicially killed more than 100 fishermen off the Venezuelan coast, bombed Caracas and killed 80 people, then kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in the middle of the night. All for oil that the U.S. has historically always imported from Venezuela anyway.
Trump failed to notify Congress before launching the invasion but somehow remembered to tip off his friends at America’s biggest oil companies—the ones who stand to profit most from controlling the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
BOTTOM LINE: The president of the United States just announced he’ll personally control billions in oil revenue stolen from another country through military force. He’s not even pretending this is about democracy or human rights or fighting drug cartels anymore. It’s about the oil. It was always about the oil.