U.S. companies will start drilling Venezuelan oil “very soon” President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday.
President Trump made the announcement returning from his participation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he also launched his new “Board of Peace” initiative.
“We’re going to start drilling very soon. We have the biggest companies in the world. We have them, and they’re going to be going in, they’re all negotiating right now,” President Trump said. “And we’re representing the nation, and the nation is very thrilled by that because we’re really good at this.
“And they’ll be taking in more money than they ever have. But we’ll be taking in a lot of money, too.”
President Trump detailed that this will achieve two things, making the United States and Venezuela “a lot of money,” but it will also bring down oil prices in America even further.
“You know, we have oil prices down in many cases to $2.30 a gallon. And also in numerous cases, $1.99 below $2,” Trump said.
Venezuela’s socialist regime is presently led by “Acting President” Delcy Rodríguez following the January 3 U.S. law enforcement operation in Caracas that saw the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.
Over the past weeks, President Trump has told reporters that Rodríguez is cooperating with the United States and is in close talks with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump and Rodríguez spoke over the phone last week.
At the time of Maduro’s capture, Rodríguez served as both Maduro’s Vice President and Oil Minister. Rodríguez has not appointed a new Oil Minister and reportedly still carries out the ministerial functions alongside the presidency at press time.
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Hours before President Trump issued his remarks abord Air Force Once, the regime-controlled National Assembly — led by Delcy’s brother Jorge Rodríguez — approved a bill introducing reforms to the nation’s draconian socialist Hydrocarbon laws that, the local newspaper El Nacional detailed, contemplates flexibilities on royalties and other measures to attract “great” foreign investment and open up Venezuelan oil to private entrepreneurship.
The text also calls for increased “legal guarantees” for oil investments, and the introduction of “mediation through independent dispute resolution mechanisms.”
Reuters, after reviewing a draft of the reform, reports that the modifications to the law would allow foreign and local companies to “operate oilfields on their own through a new contract model, commercialize output and receive sale proceeds” even if acting as minority partners of the state-owned company PDVSA.
“Together with officials from the Ministry of Hydrocarbons, we are following the healthy and necessary debate in the National Assembly on the partial reform of the Organic Law on Hydrocarbons,” Rodríguez wrote on social media.
“This reform is aimed at strengthening energy sovereignty, attracting investment, and developing unexploited fields for the benefit of the Venezuelan people.”