From Washington Post / Jan. 3, 2025
President Donald Trump said Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago Club that the United States will control Venezuela for an unspecified period after a U.S. operation captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
“We’ll run it properly. We’ll run it professionally. We’ll have the greatest oil companies in the world go in and invest billions,” he said, while declining to rule out U.S. military deployments. “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground.”
The operation involved more than 150 aircraft, including strike and intelligence assets, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said after Trump’s remarks. “On arrival into the target area, the helicopters came under fire and they replied with that fire with overwhelming force,” Caine added. “One of our aircraft was hit but remained flyable.”
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, “gave up and were taken into custody” by U.S. forces, Caine said. The couple was removed from the country by helicopter, taken aboard the USS Iwo Jima and will be brought to New York, where both are facing federal charges.
Trump said the U.S. had prepared to mount a second-wave attack in Venezuela but that he doubted it would be needed.
Trump: US Oil Companies Will Take Over Venezuela’s Oil Fields
U.S. oil companies are going to take over Venezuela’s oil fields and industry, President Donald Trump said Saturday, declaring that U.S. oil interests will revive oil production in a country with one of the world’s largest reserves.
Trump cited oil as one of the motivations for the U.S. intervention that led to the capture Saturday of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust, for a long period of time,” Trump said. “They were pumping almost nothing, by comparison to what they could have been pumping, and what could have taken place.”
“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, and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so,” Trump said.
Trump claimed that Venezuela had stolen the oil investments that U.S. companies had made in the country over time. Now, Trump said, the oil companies would recover their investments.
Sure, we’ll run it just like we run Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and all the South American countries we’ve invaded and screwed up…
No one can “steal” what does not belong to you. No oil industry company ever had the legal right to oil in the Middle East or Venezuela because they had to get permission to move and use their equipment and personnel to foreign nations. I am sure the nationalization of the Citco oil rigs in Venezuela relied on a clause in their contract to drill oil. This is standard business practice in any nation. The oil is owned by the government of Venezuela, which I am sure would gladly negotiate a permit for Citco to pack up their old equipment and take it back to the United States.