US set to take control of Venezuela's oil reserves, Trump says 'going to make lot of money'
Donald Trump also said that the US is "getting along very well" interim Venezuela President Delcy Rodriguez and her government. He said the American oil firms will rebuild the energy infrastructure in Venezuela and it would not cost 'anything' for the US in 'running' the Latin American country.
Days after conducting strikes on Venezuela and capturing President Nicolas Maduro, the United States (US) is set to take control of the oil reserves of the Latin American country, with President Donald Trump saying that it would help Washington 'make a lot of money'. The 79-year-old Republican leader also said that the US could maintain direct oversight of Venezuela for years.
Speaking to The New York Times, Trump also said that the US is "getting along very well" interim Venezuela President Delcy Rodriguez and her government. He said the American oil firms will rebuild the energy infrastructure in Venezuela and it would not cost 'anything' for the US in 'running' the Latin American country.
"Only time will tell... I would say much longer," Trump told the newspaper when asked if the US oversight of Venezuela would be for three months, six months, a year or longer.
"We will rebuild it in a very profitable way," Trump said. "We're going to be using oil, and we're going to be taking oil. We're getting oil prices down, and we're going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need."
Importance of Venezuela's oil reserves
Earlier, a senior US official had also maintained that the US oversight of Venezuela could go on for long and Washington will control Caracas' oil exports indefinitely. The US is also planning to 'selectively' revoke the sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector.
"We're just going to get that crude moving again and sell it," Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Wednesday at a conference in Miami. "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."
Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. According to a report by Associated Press (AP), the Latin American country has around 303 billion barrels of crude oil in the ground, which is about 17 per cent of the world’s supply, and the oil reserves there are largely mapped known. However, Venezuela has been unable to fully extract this potential and produces just 1 per cent of the world’s oil due to the poor infrastructure.
Some experts have noted that there will be less oil in the future to meet the global demand. "If you ask any oil company around the world, go to their exploration team, their geologists, and ask them where is oil going to come from in the 2030’s and 2040’s, their answer is a rather scary, ‘We don’t know.’ So there is going to be a problem of finding oil in the next few years," AP quoted Rystad Energy chief economist Claudio Galimberti as saying.