On Saturday, hours after U.S. forces in Caracas killed at least 80 people and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump sounded less like a wartime commander than a developer surveying a newly acquired property. The country’s future, he told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort, belonged to “very large United States oil companies,” which would soon be pumping “a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”

The land in question includes the largest proven oil reserves on Earth — at some 300 billion barrels, roughly 17 percent of global totals. But after years of political turmoil and U.S. sanctions, Venezuela accounts for barely 1 percent of global crude production. “It’s true that they know the oil is there,” said Samantha Gross, the director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution. “But the aboveground risks are huge.”

Chevron is the only major U.S. firm still operating in Venezuela, after other oil giants pulled out in 2007 when former president Hugo Chávez nationalized the industry. By continuing to operate as a minority partner under the state oil company’s terms, Chevron preserved its infrastructure, personnel, and legal foothold — giving it geopolitical leverage in the ongoing tug-of-war between the United States, China, and the Maduro government. “We play a long game,” CEO Mike Wirth explained in November at a U.S.-Saudi investment summit in Washington.

Today, Chevron is uniquely positioned in the aftermath of the invasion: Its leadership and board have long orbited Republican circles, with deep ties to the Trump administration and a history of big GOP donations. “Chevron’s in [Venezuela],” Trump said on Saturday, but “they’re only there because I wanted them to be there.” The company did not respond to requests for comment.

When Trump returned to office, his administration revoked Biden-era licenses that had allowed the oil major to operate in Venezuela despite the sanctions. Though told to stop producing by April, the company made no attempt to wrap up contracts, pull out personnel, or wind down supply chains. Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin American energy program at Rice University, said in March that it appeared “Chevron is very confident it can obtain an extension.”

Behind the scenes, executives were busy meeting with Trump and top officials, spending almost $4 million on lobbying in the first half of the year to keep their Venezuelan foothold alive. In March, Wirth joined Trump in the Oval Office, hashing out how to tweak or extend Chevron’s license. The president finds Wirth’s TV appearances entertaining, regularly calling him after cable news appearances. The CEO followed that blitz up with private sit-downs with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and staffers from the National Security Council, making the case for his company’s continued presence in the country.

By July, the gamble had paid off. The administration issued a new license, letting Chevron resume operations in Venezuela. As it did so this fall, the company saw record-breaking production and earned $3.6 billion in its last reported quarter. Though Venezuela accounts for just 100,000 to 150,000 barrels daily — a sliver of Chevron’s production — that oil is heavy, the kind the company’s Gulf Coast refineries are designed to process. Having access to Venezuelan crude can help those facilities run more efficiently, increasing supplies and reducing costs.

Just before Chevron celebrated its renewed lifeline, it scored another victory: After years of wrangling with the Federal Trade Commission, it finally acquired Hess Corporation, one of the biggest independent oil producers in the United States. Last year, the agency had banned CEO John Hess from joining Chevron’s board as part of its anti-trust review, alleging that he had colluded with OPEC representatives to fix oil prices.

That victory, however, did not occur in a vacuum. The Hess family is a major donor to the Republican party and contributed more than $1 million to Trump’s first inauguration. (Chevron, for its part, donated $2 million to the president’s 2025 ceremony.) Hess — whom Trump has called “a friend of mine for a long time” — petitioned the FTC to revisit its decision. The agency later reversed course, unlocking the deal. On July 18, Chevron officially closed its $53 billion merger, and Hess took his seat on the board.

This bought Chevron’s entry into what many analysts call the decade’s most consequential oilfield, in Guyana, Venezuela’s neighbor. In 2015, Exxon Mobil announced a huge reserve off the tiny country’s shoreline. That discovery catapulted Guyana — a nation of fewer than 1 million people — into the petroleum spotlight. Hess’ 30 percent stake in the project was a key part of Chevron’s recent acquisition.

Thanks to Trump, one of the largest remaining political obstacles to the Guyana project was just removed. Maduro had challenged Guyana’s control over the offshore area. Venezuela has periodically claimed the territory since the 1960s under a long-running border dispute. As production in the region ramped up in 2019 and as Venezuela’s own industry faltered, Maduro escalated his attacks, sending naval ships into Guyanese waters and vowing Venezuela would take “all necessary actions” to stop its development — rhetoric remarkably similar to what Trump used to justify his own actions against Maduro this week.

But though Trump claims he spoke with oil companies before and after the invasion, taking over the Venezuelan government may have been more than the industry bargained for. “There aren’t oil companies just running to get rid of tens of billions of dollars right now to rebuild the Venezuelan industry,” David Mares, the former Institute of the Americas Endowed Chair for Inter-American Affairs at the University of California San Diego, told Grist. “It’s not even clear there’s a legitimate government in place to make the contracts they sign for legal.”

Then there’s the question of Venezuela’s tangled debt. Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the state oil company, has racked up more than $150 billion in liabilities over decades of defaults and expropriations. Creditors — from energy companies like ConocoPhillips to so-called “vulture funds” that bought defaulted contracts at deep discounts — have pursued arbitration against the country, and won court rulings for damages that remain unpaid. China has been the country’s largest foreign lender, loaning it more than $60 billion over the years. Only some of that has been repaid, mostly in the form of oil exports. As Mares notes, “As soon as Venezuelan oil starts to flow, some of those claimants can attach the proceeds, and they’re going to demand their money back.”

Experts warn that returning to even modest levels of production would require upgrading Venezuela’s aging infrastructure, a process that would require massive investment and political stability — conditions that have eluded Caracas for years and seem unlikely to materialize anytime soon. “There is no realistic prospect of immediately increasing Venezuela’s crude output,” Gus Vasquez, the head of oil pricing in the Americas for commodity markets analyst Argus Media, wrote in an emailed statement. “Venezuelan oil infrastructure would take years and possibly hundreds of billions to bring up to something close to its former capacity. Repairing refineries would be even harder.”

Chevron’s existing assets give the company a very different calculus than newcomers would face. But the timing could not be worse: Global crude oil prices have steadily declined over the last several years, recently dropping below $60 a barrel — approaching the break-even point for many American operators. That’s been driven by global supply surpluses and by weakening demand, as renewable energy prices drop. “I think what we’re seeing is that the days of the oil and gas industry being the growth engine of economies is well behind us,” said Trey Cowan, an oil and gas energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Despite these structural shifts, Gross notes, “Trump has a very old-school way of thinking about resource economics,” as a blunt lever of power. As companies like Chevron have found, aligning with his priorities can bring financial and regulatory advantages, even if they are not supported by broader market conditions. This week, the company’s stock jumped 6 percent.

On TruthSocial on Tuesday, Trump announced that Caracas would be “turning over” between 30 and 50 million barrels of “sanctioned oil” that will then be sold. “[T]hat money will be controlled by me,” he wrote. Trump hopes to lower oil prices to $50 a barrel, which would squeeze shale producers and destabilize the U.S. oil industry. On Wednesday, the Department of Energy issued a brief announcement elaborating, as Chevron entered talks with the administration to increase its operations and resell oil to other refiners. The statement declares the U.S. will sell the sovereign nation’s crude on the global marketplace and describes the proceeds as going to “U.S.-controlled accounts at globally recognized banks,” an unusual setup that bypasses the U.S. Treasury. The money is vaguely promised to serve both Americans and Venezuelans, and the arrangement will be indefinite. “You’re going to see, probably, a growth in Chevron activities there quickly,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said on Thursday.

Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into the Trump administration’s communications with oil companies, which they claim occurred 10 days before the invasion, while Congress was not briefed. “The suggestion that taxpayers could pay the cost of rebuilding Venezuela’s oil infrastructure raise serious concerns about how the Trump administration engaged with the oil companies prior to his decision to use military force,” they wrote. Gross says to the extent Trump can be described as a populist, it is largely a performance — one “he might play on TV” — but she added that typically, “When you see populist governments take over oil industries, it doesn’t usually turn out well.”

In all the turmoil, what no one appears to be asking is what is good for Venezuela. “The saddest part of this is that unwinding the Maduro regime does not seem to be a part of what Trump policy is aiming for,” said Cynthia Arson, former director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center’s Latin American Program. In its statements after the strike, the White House has largely overlooked questions about a democratic transition, sidelining concerns about human rights abuses and the treatment of political prisoners.

Even when oil starts flowing, a new Venezuelan government will likely struggle to meet public expectations while attracting foreign investment. Before Chávez, the country’s oil contracts typically gave the government around 50 percent of revenue, helping fund social programs and the middle class. U.S. oil majors, by contrast, often offer royalties around 12 percent.

The contrast highlights just how fragile and uncertain the path ahead is: Years of economic collapse, which have driven millions abroad, have left those remaining struggling with profound political and social upheaval that can’t be solved by oil alone. “If good things happen, they’re going to take time,” Gross said. “Bad things could actually happen pretty quickly.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/how-chevron-played-the-long-game-in-venezuela/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

President Donald Trump told the New York Post in an interview that the military used a "discombobulator," but the Pentagon says he's confused.

A "discombobulator" is not a standard or officially recognized military weapon or device. The term does not appear in military equipment databases, Department of Defense documentation, or official weapons systems nomenclature.

The word itself is slang meaning to confuse or perplex someone, and it has occasionally been used colloquially or humorously to describe various non-lethal devices or tactics intended to disorient targets. However, there is no formal military equipment known by this name.

“The discombobulator, I’m not allowed to talk about it,” Trump said, but added that it “made [enemy] equipment not work” during the capture of Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro.

In a report Sunday, CNN cited a senior U.S. official who claimed Trump "may be conflating several capabilities into a single weapon that doesn’t exist."

According to the official, the U.S. military used cyber tools to "disable early warning" systems and the power grid. It also used acoustic systems to disorient Maduro's security on the ground.

CNN reported, "The US military also for years has had a heat ray weapon, called the Active Denial System, which uses directed, pulsed energy. It’s not clear whether that was used as well."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reposted comments on X from a Venezuelan security guard who said that the U.S. "launched something" during the attack and that it “was like a very intense sound wave.”

“Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside. We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move," the security guard said.

The government hasn't revealed details about the operation to the public.

Read the full report here.

There was of course much discussion on my Sirius XM program yesterday about Donald Trump’s illegal invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of its leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro.

And that’s when Eli in Virginia called, a true MAGA warrior, to challenge my statements. I’d been explaining that, for legal and political cover, Trump presented this at first as a law enforcement operation, because his DOJ in his first administration had indicted Maduro on drug trafficking charges in 2020—though not his wife, who was only indicted in the superseding indictment a few days ago—and I explained how ludicrous that was.

The U.S. has, after all, indicted people around the world who are far more dangerous to the United States—like, for example, the officers of the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU) for interfering in the 2016 election, and later attacking critical American infrastructure and hacking anti-doping agencies—but we have not used the military to swoop in and capture them. (The drug trade from Venezuela is modest compared to other countries.) One third of the U.S. Navy was used to block Venezuela to get Maduro, while special forces risked their lives and while 80 people in Venezuela were killed as bombs were dropped, many of them innocent civilians.

No, Trump killed people, risked American military lives and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to remove Maduro in order to get Venezuela’s oil, in adddition to his personal animus. He’s now admitted as much—stopped talking about drugs and is only talking about oil—and hasn’t said anything about democracy. In fact, he’s leaving the Maduro regime in place to continue to oppress the Venezuelan people as he attempts to extract the black gold.

You can listen to the call with Eli here—which is a must-listen if other callers and folks on social media listening to the show are to be believed!—who began by telling me I have TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) and then started rattling off military operations of other presidents going back decades.

With facts and details, I debunked his claims about other military missions by both Democratic presidents and Republican presidents—most of which I had opposed, no matter the president’s party—which failed miserably, whether there were boots on the ground or not. And of course, in Iraq, George W. Bush cost the lives of thousands of Americans soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

But the one detail that truly exposed Eli as a fraud who was just spouting talking points was his claim that stopping drugs and their impact on Americans was enough of a reason to get Maduro. When I asked him what he thought of Trump’s pardon of the former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, he suddenly had no talking points or facts:

Signorile: And then what about the Honduras president pardoned because he was working with drug traffickers. Donald Trump just pardoned him a few weeks ago?
Eli: Honduras? Yeah, he. I don't know if—I don't know what the circumstances are.
Signorile: How come you don’t know the circumstances? Why is it when I question you people, you don’t know the circumstances of the thing that exposes the bullshit that you’re pulling? See? Come on now, I want you to Google it right now, Eli. I want you to Google it, or I’m going to have my producer Google it, and I’m going to read it to you so that you know the circumstances. Hernandez, the president of Honduras was indicted. And by the way, the investigation was under the first Trump administration [which unsealed incriminating documents against Hernandez in 2019] through the Biden administration.

A frazzled Eli then grabbed for Hillary Clinton. And Joe Biden. But no, I didn’t allow him to distract.

Signorile: I want you to answer how you know all that and you don’t know this? Why don’t you know about this? Why don’t you know? If you care about drugs? Why don’t you know about the Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was pardoned on charges of drug trafficking, all of it, and was freed because he happens to be a right winger who Donald Trump likes. That’s it.

He tried wriggling around some more, but I pressed him, “Why did he pardon him?”

Eli: Because he was a political hit job.

“Political hit job"?” I responded. “You didn't even know about this two minutes ago. Now it's a political hit job. Wow, that's pretty amazing!”

And with that I told him his world was crumbling and sent him on his way. Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

Two centuries ago, US President James Monroe declared the Western Hemisphere off-limits to European powers in what would became known in history books as the “Monroe Doctrine”.

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.

One of President Donald Trump’s top billionaire donors, who has spent the past several months backing a push for regime change in Venezuela, is about to cash in after the president’s kidnapping of the nation’s president, Nicolas Maduro, this weekend.

While he declined to tell members of Congress, Trump has said he tipped off oil executives before the illegal attack. At a press conference following the attack, he said the US would have “our very large United States oil companies” go into Venezuela, which he said the US will “run” indefinitely, and “start making money” for the United States.

As Judd Legum reported on Monday for Popular Information, among the biggest beneficiaries will be the billionaire investor Paul Singer:

In 2024, Singer, an 81-year-old with a net worth of $6.7 billion, donated $5 million to Make America Great Again Inc., Trump’s Super PAC. Singer donated tens of millions more in the 2024 cycle to support Trump’s allies, including $37 million to support the election of Republicans to Congress. He also donated an undisclosed amount to fund Trump’s second transition.

Singer is also a major pro-Israel donor, with his foundation having donated more than $3.3 million to groups like the Birthright Israel Foundation, the Israel America Academic Exchange, Boundless Israel, and others in 2021, according to tax filings.

In November 2025, less than two months before Trump’s operation to take over Venezuela, Singer’s investment firm, Elliott Investment Management, inked a highly fortuitous deal.

It purchased Citgo, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, for $5.9 billion—a sale that was forced by a Delaware court after Venezuela defaulted on its bond payments.

The court-appointed special master who forced the sale, Robert Pincus, is a member of the board of directors for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Elliott Management hailed the court order requiring the sale in a press release, saying it was “backed by a group of strategic US energy investors.”

Singer acquired the Citgo’s three massive coastal refineries, 43 oil terminals, and more than 4,000 gas stations at a “major discount” because of its distressed status. Advisers to the court overseeing the sale estimated its value at $11-13 billion, while the Venezuelan government estimated it at $18 billion.

As Legum explained, the Trump administration’s embargo on Venezuelan oil imports to the United States bore the primary responsibility for the company’s plummeting value:

Citgo’s refiners are purpose-built to process heavy-grade Venezuelan “sour” crude. As a result, Citgo was forced to source oil from more expensive sources in Canada and Colombia. (Oil produced in the United States is generally light-grade.) This made Citgo’s operations far less profitable.

It is the preferred modus operandi for Singer, whose hedge fund is often described as a “vulture” capital group. As Francesca Fiorentini, a commentator at Zeteo, explained, Singer “is famous for doing things like buying the debt of struggling countries like Argentina for pennies on the dollar and then forcing that country to repay him with interest plus legal fees.”

Venezuelan Vice President and Minister of Petroleum Delcy Rodríguez called the sale of Citgo to Singer “fraudulent” and “forced” in December.

After the US abducted Maduro this week, Trump named Rodriguez as Venezuela’s interim president—and she was formally sworn in Monday—but he warned that she’ll pay a “very big price” if she refuses to do “what we want.”

That is good news for Singer, who is expected to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of an oil industry controlled by US corporations, which will likely not be subject to crippling sanctions.

Singer has reportedly met with Trump directly at least four times since he was first elected in 2016, most recently in 2024. While it is unknown whether the two discussed Venezuela during those meetings, groups funded by Singer have pushed aggressively for Trump to take maximal action to decapitate the country’s leadership.

Since 2011, Singer has donated over $10 million and continues to sit on the board of directors for the right-wing Manhattan Institute think tank, which in recent months has consistently advocated for Maduro to be removed from power. In October, it published an article praising Trump for his “consistent policies against Venezuela’s Maduro.”

He has also been a major donor to the neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), serving as its second-largest contributor from 2008-2011, with more than $3.6 million.

In late November, shortly before Trump announced that the US had closed Venezuelan airspace and began to impound Venezuelan oil tankers, FDD published a policy brief stating that the US has “capabilities to launch an overwhelming air and missile campaign against the Maduro regime” that it could use to remove him from power.

Singer himself has acted as a financial attack dog for Trump during his first year back in office. In June, he contributed $1 million to fund a super PAC aiming to oust Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who’d become Trump’s leading Republican critic over his Department of Justice’s refusal to release its files pertaining to the billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

A super PAC tied to Miriam Adelson, another top pro-Israel donor who recently said she’d give Trump $250 million if he ran for a third term, also reportedly helped to fund the campaign against Massie.

Massie has since gone on to be one of the most vocal opponents in Congress to Trump’s regime change push in Venezuela, joining Democrats to co-sponsor multiple failed war powers resolutions that would have reined in the president’s ability to launch military strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and launch an attack on mainland Venezuela.

As the Trump administration has asserted that American corporations are entitled to the oil controlled by Venezuela’s state firm, Massie rebutted this weekend that: “It’s not American oil. It’s Venezuelan oil.”

“Oil companies entered into risky deals to develop oil, and the deals were canceled by a prior Venezuelan government,” he said. “What’s happening: Lives of US soldiers are being risked to make those oil companies (not Americans) more profitable.”

Massie said that Singer, “who’s already spent $1,000,000 to defeat me in the next election, stands to make billions of dollars on his distressed Citgo investment, now that this administration has taken over Venezuela.”

Fiorentini added that “Paul Singer’s shady purchase of Citgo has everything to do with this coup.”