President Donald Trump made the stunning claim Saturday just hours after his administration’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro that American oil companies would be “very much involved” in the nation’s oil industry moving forward.
The Trump administration carried out an unprecedented attack Saturday morning on Venezuela that resulted in the capture of its president, who has since been extradited to New York to face trial on drug-trafficking charges. Trump phoned in to Fox News hours after the attack, and was asked what he saw as the future of Venezuela’s oil industry, which manages the single-largest oil reserves on earth.
“Well I see that we’re going to be very strongly involved in it,” Trump admitted. “We have the greatest oil companies in the world – the biggest, the greatest – and we’re going to be very much involved.”
Trump’s remarks are supported by past statements by some Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), who in late November predicted that American oil companies would be “in Venezuela for the next 100 years,” and previously boasted how American oil companies would have a “field day” enriching themselves with Venezuela’s oil reserves.
The United States has enacted regime change in South American nations countless times after being denied unchecked access to natural resources, perhaps most notably in Chile when in 1973, a U.S.-backed coup overthrew its democratically elected leader at the behest of American mining and communication companies that had been stripped of their control of Chile’s resources.Trump already announcing American oil companies to "be very much involved" in Venezuela's oil industry post-Maduro.
'We have the greatest oil companies in the world – the biggest, the greatest – and we’re going to be very much involved." pic.twitter.com/5sSpgyhJ6z
— Alexander Willis (@ReporterWillis) January 3, 2026