President Donald Trump said Saturday he would allow American oil companies to head into Venezuela to tap its massive crude reserves after a US military operation that seized the country's leader Nicolas Maduro.
"We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country," Trump told a press conference.
Trump also said "the embargo on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect."
As part of a weeks-long military pressure campaign against Venezuela in the run-up to the raid, US forces seized at least two oil tankers that Washington said were subject to US sanctions.
Trump also warned other political and military figures in Venezuela, saying that "what happened to Maduro can happen to them."
Venezuela has been under US oil sanctions since 2019. It produces about a million barrels of crude per day. It sells most on the black market at steep discounts.
Trump claims Caracas is using oil money to finance "drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping."
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