Trump says Venezuela is stealing American oil. Here’s what really happened.

When President Trump announced the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on Saturday, justified the military operation in part by suspending it as a measure to recover assets he said had been stolen from American companies.

“Venezuela has seized and sold American oil, American goods and American platforms out of hand, costing billions and billions of dollars,” said Mr. “This was one of the largest thefts of American property in our country’s history.”

Who owns Venezuela’s oil?

The president’s focus on Venezuelan oil raises questions about the activities of US energy companies in the country, and whether US oil giants now it can work to refresh its faltering petroleum industry. Venezuela’s constitution states that the country owns all minerals and hydrocarbon deposits – oil and natural gas reserves – within its territory, including those under the country’s seabed.

Mr. Trump “is talking about them taking our oil — the oil itself has never been ‘our oil,'” Samantha Gross, director of energy security and climate action at the nonprofit Brookings Institution, told CBS News, adding that large crude reserves “for the government of Venezuela.”

What is also true, however, is that US oil companies have contractual agreements with Venezuela to extract, process and transport its oil, and to share the profits from oil sales.

The claims of Mr. Trump’s thefts reflect the actions of then-Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez to nationalize the country’s energy sector in 2007 and to seize production assets of Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips after he left the country, Gross said.

That holding led to years of litigation and attempts by companies to recoup their losses. Although the World Bank favored the oil companies, the money has not returned.

“There is no doubt that there are a number of American companies and others out there that have claims against Venezuela that have been trying to satisfy those claims for years,” Ted Posner, a partner at the law firm Baker Botts and former assistant general counsel for international affairs at the US Treasury Department, told CBS News.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Oil industry executives they met on Friday afternoon at the White House with Mr. Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright to discuss Venezuela. Representatives from Exxon, Chevron and ConocoPhillips were in attendance, including ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance.

“ConocoPhillips continues to monitor developments in Venezuela and their potential impacts on global energy supply and stability,” the company said in a statement ahead of the meeting.

Chevron said after Friday’s meeting: “For more than a century, Chevron has been part of Venezuela’s past. We are committed to the present. And we stand ready to help it build a better future while strengthening US power and regional security.”

Exxon did not respond to requests for comment.

Chávez’s power – and corruption

The Venezuelan government has a long history of nationalizing its oil sector, and the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, took over the industry in the 1970s. ExxonMobil and other foreign oil companies continued to operate in the country by signing contracts to provide technical assistance and other expertise to PDVSA.

In the 1990s, Exxon and other major oil companies were invited by then-Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez to return in an effort to develop oil reserves in the Orinoco River Basin, according to “Energy in the Americas,” a book published by the University of Calgary Press.

In 2003, Chavez was fired thousands of PDVSA employees after the strike. Four years later, he expanded the nationalization campaign by requiring foreign companies to give majority ownership of their operations to the PDVSA. Exxon and ConocoPhillips failed to strike a deal with Venezuela, and BP, Houston-based Chevron, Norway’s Statoil and France’s Total signed deals giving them a majority stake in PDVSA, allowing them to stay, Reuters reported in 2007.

“Some agreed, some didn’t, and property was taken,” said Gross.

Amid widespread corruption under Chávez, as journalist Anne Appelbaum noted in a 2024 book, hundreds of billions of dollars from PDVSA and other Venezuelan companies were confiscated and disappeared into private bank accounts around the world.

A 2017 investigation by US and Portuguese authorities found that PDVSA executives funneled millions of dollars to Portugal’s Banco Espirito Santo.

World Bank: Venezuela owes billions to Big Oil

Chávez’s strong-arm tactics have led to efforts by Exxon and ConocoPhillips to seek compensation for their assets, with Exxon saying it lost $16.6 billion as a result of the nationalization campaign. The World Bank in 2014 awarded the company a tenth of what it was seeking, but an arbitration panel in 2017 overturned most of that award.

In another case, the World Bank ruled that Venezuela owes ConocoPhillips $8.7 billion as compensation for the seizure of its assets in 2007.

Other industries were also expropriated under Chávez’s 14-year rule, and companies have filed at least 60 arbitration claims against Venezuela since the 2000s, according to Luisa Palacios, a senior research fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy.

“The value of these debts is estimated at $20 to $30 billion or about 10% to 15% of the nearly $200 billion in bonds owed by Venezuela,” he said in an article published by Columbia this week.

“Venezuela can pay these claims by inviting investors to return to the country,” he said. “That can be done through debt-equity swaps or by tying future oil production to current debt repayments. However, restructuring the country’s external obligations will likely be necessary for Venezuela to fully realize its oil potential.”

The US is wasting no time

Venezuela’s oil reserves estimated to be the largest in the world, with more than 303 billion barrels. That represents about 17% of the world’s total oil supply, according to OPEC data.

But Venezuela’s crude oil production has declined, with the industry today pumping 800,000 to 1 million barrels a day, down from more than 3 million a day in the early 2000s. That output has fallen due to chronic underinvestment, government mismanagement, and the impact of US and international sanctions.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the US will export between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil from Venezuela, which will be sold at “market prices,” with the proceeds used “in a way that benefits the Venezuelan people.”

White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt told reporters that Venezuela’s interim government has agreed to release the oil.

Although Mr. With Trump pushing U.S. oil companies to invest in Venezuela following Maduro’s impeachment, they may need reassurance before committing to new ventures, Gross said.

“The political situation in Venezuela is really uncertain right now. Before the company can really invest a lot of money, it will need a stable political situation,” he added.