United States President, Donald Trump says he will allow American oil companies to go into Venezuela to tap its massive crude reserves after a US military operation seized its leader, Nicolas Maduro.
President Trump announced this during a Press Conference conference in Florida.
According to him US is going to have 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.
He also said the embargo on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect
President Trump claimed that Caracas is using oil money to finance drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping.
The US military carried out a series of air strikes on Venezuela’s capital Caracas, early on Saturday.
President Maduro and his wife were captured and flown to New York City, where they face drug-trafficking and weapons charges.
It would be recalled that Washington imposed economic sanctions on Venezuela in 2017, followed by oil sanctions two years later.
Venezuela produces just under a million barrels of crude a day, according to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and sells most of it on the black market at steep discounts.
Venezuelan oil is of lower quality and is mostly processed into diesel or byproducts such as asphalt, rather than gasoline.
The United States has refineries around the Gulf of Mexico specifically designed to handle it.
