U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives to address House Republicans at their annual issues conference retreat, at the Kennedy Center, renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center by the Trump-appointed board of directors, in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 6, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
With leftist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro having been captured by U.S. forces and sent to a federal detention center in New York City, U.S. President Donald Trump is pressuring oil companies to invest their resources in the troubled South American country. But their CEOs, according to reporting from Politico and CNN, are expressing skepticism about Trump's goals for Venezuelan oil.
CNN reporters Adam Cancryn and David Goldman, in an article published on January 8, explain, "The proposal the executives are discussing comes as they scramble to gameplan for Friday's high-stakes meeting with Trump, where the president is widely expected to push oil companies to quickly return to Venezuela. Trump has claimed repeatedly, since authorizing the capture of Nicolás Maduro and taking charge of Venezuela's oil sales, that the industry is eager to put billions of dollars toward revitalizing the oil-rich country. But major U.S. oil companies have no plans to do so anytime soon."
Cancryn and Goldman add, "Venezuela is still viewed as far too risky to reenter in the wake of Maduro's ouster, with major questions surrounding the nation's political stability and the White House's plans for 'running' the country for the foreseeable future. In a flurry of private discussions over the last several days, oil executives have sought to coordinate their approach to the White House meeting, fearing that Trump will press them to make on-the-spot commitments to pour money into Venezuela."
A CNN source described by Cancryn and Goldman as someone "familiar with" Trump's discussions with oil execs compared the meetings to a game of dodgeball.
The source, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told CNN, "It's, how do we say, 'Yes, but'….. These guys are lined up, and Trump's going to start throwing balls at them. And they're wondering how they're going to duck.”
CNN's Vaughn Sterling, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who is now executive producer for Kaitlin Collins' show, "The Source," offered some takeaways from Cancryn and Goldman's reporting in a January 9 post on X, formerly Twitter.
Sterling tweeted, "Restoring Venezuela's output beyond 3 million barrels per day, industry experts agree, could take tens of billions of dollars a year and more than a decade of work. But getting production back up to 1.5 million barrels by maximizing the country’s existing energy infrastructure should be possible with relatively minimal investment."
Read Adam Cancryn and David Goldman's full CNN article at this link.