The administration of US President Donald Trump is planning to meet with executives from US oil companies later this week to discuss boosting Venezuelan oil production after US forces ousted its leader Nicolas Maduro, according to a source familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
The meetings are crucial to the administration\u2019s hopes of getting top US oil companies back into the South American nation after its government, nearly two decades ago, took control of US-led energy operations there.<\/p>\n
The three biggest US oil companies \u2014 Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron \u2014 have not yet had any conversations with the administration about Maduro\u2019s ouster, according to four oil industry executives familiar with the matter, contradicting Trump\u2019s statements over the weekend that he had already held meetings with \u201call\u201d the US oil companies, both before and since Maduro was seized.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody in those three companies has had conversations with the White House about operating in Venezuela, pre-removal or post-removal to this point,\u201d one of the sources said on Monday.<\/p>\n
The upcoming meetings will be crucial to the administration\u2019s hopes to boost crude oil production and exports from Venezuela, a former OPEC nation which sits atop the world\u2019s largest reserves and whose barrels can be refined by specially designed US refineries.<\/p>\n
Achieving that goal will require years of work and billions of dollars of investment, analysts say.<\/p>\n
It is unclear what executives will be attending the upcoming meetings, and whether oil companies will be attending individually or collectively.<\/p>\n
The White House did not comment on the meetings but said it believed the US oil industry was ready to move into Venezuela.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of our oil companies are ready and willing to make big investments in Venezuela that will rebuild their oil infrastructure, which was destroyed by the illegitimate Maduro regime,\u201d said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.<\/p>\n
Exxon, Chevron and ConocoPhillips did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Trump told NBC News the US may subsidise oil companies to enable them to rebuild Venezuela\u2019s energy infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Asked if the administration had briefed any oil companies ahead of the military operation, Trump said, \u201cNo. But weve been talking to the concept of, \u2018what if we did it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe oil companies were absolutely aware that we were thinking about doing something,\u201d Trump told NBC News.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we didn\u2019t tell them we were going to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He told NBC News it was \u201ctoo soon\u201d to say whether he had personally spoken to top executives at the three companies.<\/p>\n
\u201cI speak to everybody,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
CBS News, citing an unnamed source, said executives from the three were expected to meet on Thursday with Energy Secretary Chris Wright.<\/p>\n
One oil industry executive told Reuters the companies would be reluctant to talk about potential Venezuela operations in group settings with the White House, citing anti-trust concerns that limit collective discussions among competitors about investment plans, timing and production levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The administration of US President Donald Trump is planning to meet with executives from US oil companies later this week to discuss boosting Venezuelan oil production after US forces ousted its leader Nicolas Maduro, according to a source familiar with the matter. The meetings are crucial to the administration\u2019s hopes of getting top US oil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14946,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14944\/revisions\/14946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}