WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump pressed top oil executives on Friday to invest in Venezuela’s vast reserves, but was met with a cautious reception — with one major CEO dismissing the country as “uninvestable” without sweeping reforms.

Trump told the industry leaders that his administration — not Caracas — would decide which firms are allowed to operate in Venezuela following the stunning capture of Nicolas Maduro, the deposed president.

“We’re going to be making the decision as to which oil companies are going to go in... (we’re) going to cut a deal with the companies,” Trump said at the White House, arguing that foreign firms had had no meaningful protection under Maduro.

“But now you have total security. It’s a whole different Venezuela,” he added.

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Trump said oil companies would “deal with us directly”, signalling that the US government would attempt to cut the oil-rich, cash-poor Latin American nation completely out of the loop when it came to exploiting its own resources.

Despite Trump’s assurances, ExxonMobil chief executive Darren Woods struck a note of scepticism.

“We’ve had our assets seized there twice and so, you can imagine, to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes,” he said.

“If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela today, it’s uninvestable.”

The White House meeting came less than a week after US forces seized Maduro, with Trump making no secret that control of Venezuela’s oil was central to his action.

Opening the session, he said the talks would focus on how US companies could rapidly rebuild the country’s dilapidated oil industry and boost production by millions of barrels a day.

Vice President J. D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Energy Secretary Chris Wright attended alongside executives from Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Trafigura, Vitol Americas and Repsol, among others.

A spokesman for ConocoPhillips said CEO Ryan Lance appreciated the discussion about “preparing Venezuela to be investment ready”.

Speaking after the meeting, Trump said participants had “sort of formed a deal”, but offered no specifics. He claimed oil companies were prepared to invest “at least 100 billion dollars”.

Rebuilding will ‘take time’

Analysts said Trump’s push to revive Venezuela’s oil industry rests on shaky economic and strategic ground.

Experts warned that vast reserves on paper do not translate into quick or profitable production, pointing to outdated infrastructure, political instability, heavy crude that is costly to extract, and investor unease in a world shifting away from fossil fuels.

“There’s lots of talk about the size of the reserves — 300 billion barrels of proven reserves — but what’s often missing from the conversation is how realistic it is for those to be economically extracted,” said Rich Collett-White, an energy analyst at Carbon Tracker.

After the talks, Wright — who has said Washington will control Venezuela’s oil industry “indefinitely” — admitted that it will “take time” to rebuild its infrastructure.

While the president touts the country’s oil resources to US companies, Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez has said her government remains in charge.

The state oil company has said only that it was in negotiations with Washington.

Chevron is currently the only US firm licensed to operate in Venezuela.

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips exited in 2007 after refusing demands by then-president Hugo Chavez to cede majority control to the state.

Sanctioned by Washington since 2019, Venezuela sits on about a fifth of the world’s oil reserves and was once a major crude supplier to the United States.

But it produced only around one per cent of the world’s total crude output in 2024, having been hampered by years of underinvestment, sanctions and embargoes.

Trump sees the country’s massive oil reserves as a windfall in his fight to further lower US domestic fuel prices.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order protecting US-held money derived from sales of Venezuelan oil, after the ouster of Nicolas Maduro.

In the order, Trump — who has made clear that tapping Venezuela’s vast oil reserves was a key goal in the US ouster of Maduro — is acting “to advance US foreign policy objectives,” the White House said in a fact sheet accompanying the order.

Published in Dawn, January 11th, 2026