Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org. Hi, this is Creighton in Nagoya, Japan, where I have just made it to the top of a mountain for the first time in nine weeks after breaking my foot. This podcast was recorded at 12.08 p.m. on Thursday, January 8th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be hitting the trails. Okay, enjoy the show. Creighton's like upped everyone else who's climbed mountains. She's doing it with practically a broken foot. Yes, though I do have to say. How many mountains are there? How can we have so many mountains climbed? We need more podcast episodes to cover all the mountains or get more mountains. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordoniez. I also cover the White House. And NPR Business Correspondent Camila Dominozki is here. Hi, Camila. Hi, y'all. So today on the show, we're talking about oil, specifically how President Trump plans to use Venezuelan oil and whether those plans can give him the political boost he's hoping for. Let's start with the basics. President Trump put out a post on social media earlier this week talking about keeping oil. What is he talking about and where is this oil coming from? Yeah, so the president referenced 30 to 50 million barrels of oil that he said would be controlled by the US, sold by the US. And it's important to note that Venezuela, there's been a lot of talk about how oil production there has collapsed, but the country is still making oil, right? A million barrels a day, a little less than that. The state owned oil company, PEDAVISA, is active. There are international oil companies. Chevron is the only American one, but they are working in the country. And so the country has been making this oil, but the oil has been under US sanctions, which make it more difficult to sell. And more recently, the US has actually been blockading ships and preventing exports from Venezuela. So what that means is that the oil that Venezuela has been producing, a lot of it has not been able to get out and it has been building up in storage. So when the president talks about these 30 to 50 million barrels, that, based on what officials have said, that's what they're talking about. This oil that couldn't leave the country because of the blockade built up in storage, it's not new oil. This isn't massively increasing production in Venezuela like the president has also talked about. We can talk about that more later. This is the oil that the country has been making already and has not been able to sell. Can you just help me understand, because millions of barrels of oil sounds like a lot of oil? How much oil is this? Yeah. So it's well over a month of production from Venezuela. It's a few days worth of US oil consumption. So we burn through that much oil in just a few days. And it's worth a chunk of change. Even at a discount, you're talking well over a billion dollars worth of oil. And I'll also note this oil, if it weren't for the blockade, would be going onto international markets, almost certainly to China. A lot of Venezuelan oil has been being sold to China, evading sanctions, selling at a steep discount. So Venezuela is not making as much money as it would have been. That was part of the point of the sanctions. But so this is really redirecting that oil. And Franco, do you have a sense of what President Trump is hoping to accomplish with this oil? What is his goal with bringing this oil to the US? What does he want to do with it? I mean, I think the 30 to 50 million barrels oil, I think largely, I think this is more of a messaging thing at this point. I mean, Trump's always been obsessed with oil. It has always been a big part of his agenda. He talks about energy dominance all the time. But for this specific oil, this 30 to 50 million barrels, I think this is more of a message to Americans. Look, this was not just foreign intervention. This was me trying to recapture, in his words, US stolen oil and bring back it to the United States. And also say this is the beginning of what is to come. Even Caroline Levitt, the press secretary, said yesterday, we have a lot of plans, a lot of things are happening, and this is just the first step. Can you just explain the stolen oil thing, the history there? Yeah, I can. I mean, this dates back all the way back to before Venezuelan leader, Nicolas Maduro, it goes back to Hugo Chavez years back in the mid-2000s. When he was elected leader of Venezuela, one of the things that he did was he nationalized oil. Some of these, at least, were some US oil companies that were essentially kicked out. And there has been some involvement in US oil companies. Chevron just came back during the Biden years, allowed to re-enter the market. I think Trump is using this largely for political purposes, though, as his supporters are very concerned about involvement in foreign issues. This is a way of making a statement about domestic interest. This won't cost us because we've got the oil. Camila, do you have any sense of how this might impact the oil markets? Yeah, I mean, right now, globally, the oil market is oversupplied with oil. There's actually more oil than the world needs. At the same time, the specific kind of oil that comes out of Venezuela, which is very heavy, it's really thick, sticky oil, it's hard to work with, but it's actually perfectly suited for the United States, because we have a bunch of refineries that have invested a lot decades ago in being able to handle exactly that kind of oil. And they would welcome a modest increase in how much heavy crude they're getting from Venezuela. So generally speaking, adding more oil to the market, especially at a time when there's more oil out there, does tend to push prices down. I will note that oil markets have not gone crazy one way or the other since this has been happening. It's generally seen, again, this is a redirection of oil that the market had already budgeted in is maybe going to China rather than being some sort of huge shift in global balances for now. And Franco, do you have any sense of what would happen with the money that would come from selling this oil? Well, I think a big issue is President Trump has said that he is going to control that money. And he is going to use it, he says, to help Venezuelans as well as help U.S. interests. But it's actually gotten a lot of pushback from Democrats, because this is kind of money that's coming from these types of things. It's supposed to go into the U.S. Treasury. Trump is essentially saying that he is going to handle this money. And Democrats at least, and some members of Congress, are saying that he is trying to use this money as his personal slush fund. And that has become a significant issue. Trump's already tried to move money around in ways and bypass Congress. So this is another issue that is going to get a lot of scrutiny from Congress. The president has talked very clearly about this being the U.S. controlling the oil, the U.S. selling the oil. Pérez, the national oil company in Venezuela, has put out a statement saying that they are negotiating with the U.S. to sell oil to the U.S., framing it as much more of a traditional business transaction with similar terms of how they interact with Chevron now. There's just a lot of uncertainty about what exactly is going to happen. The oil companies aren't commenting publicly. They're not returning my calls. A lot of this in terms of what the actual contracts are going to look like, we're still waiting to see. And I want to get to something, Franco, that you alluded to earlier, which is President Trump has long been fixated on oil, specifically in the Middle East. Remember, I've been saying this for years, folks, keep the oil. Shouldn't have been there if you get out, keep the oil. And we should have kept the oil. Remember, I used to say in the old days, don't go in a rack, but if you go in, keep the oil. We didn't keep the oil. So stupid, so stupid, these people. We're not taking over the oil. We could have, you know. I used to say with a rack, keep the oil. I could say it here, too. We could have kept the oil. And that last clip was Trump talking about Iran. But those clips are from 2016, 2021, and 2025. And the first record I found actually goes back even further to 2011. So Franco, this is a consistent message from the president. What does it tell you about his thinking now? Clearly, this is something he has been obsessed with for so long. His energy, you know, dominance agenda is a big part of his, you know, international as well as domestic agenda. I mean, he's long felt that greater abundance of energy would translate, for example, into lower prices. On the campaign, I went to so many stops with him. Practically every single campaign, he would talk about energy prices. He would talk about the price of gasoline. And he would blame inflation, the inflation that had so prevalent during the Biden years, on the price of energy. And he felt that getting energy costs down, because it would lower, you know, gas prices, trucks would be able to haul more stuff. Everything was, you know, kind of revolved around this. And that's, you know, key now as well, because I mean, obviously, we have the midterms later this year. And this is a big part of his focus on tackling affordability. And, you know, we can talk later about geopolitics. There's so many different layers here. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll have more in a moment. This message comes from wise, the app for international people using money around the globe. You can send, spend and receive an up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get wise, download the wise app today, or visit wise.com, tease and seize, apply support for NPR. And the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org. And we're back. And we've been talking about President Trump's plans for Venezuelan oil. Franco, you mentioned we could talk about geopolitics. Let's do it. What kind of impact do you think this U.S. involvement in Venezuelan oil might have? I mean, it's the most glaring example, I would say, of Trump's desire to dominate the Western Hemisphere. You know, it's part of his larger goals for pushing out Russia and China out of the region. You know, the administration has even told Delcey Rodriguez, the acting president of Venezuela, that she needs to kick out China and Russia, as well as Iran and Cuba and several economic ties. I mean, this is a matter of, you know, influence even this weekend after the capture of Maduro. President Trump said that American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again. Camila, before we were talking about the 30 to 50 million barrels of oil that Trump posted about this week, but there's more going on here. And he has talked about this on Air Force One on Sunday. He was asked if he had spoken to the oil companies. He said, yes, he had spoken to the oil companies both before and after the raid that captured Maduro. And he said that these companies are eager to go in and work in Venezuela, another part in that gaggle. He talked about how rebuilding the oil industry, having US companies rebuild the oil industry, would allow there to be so much money that they could rebuild the infrastructure of Venezuela and make the country great again. Camila, can you fact check this for us about the oil industry? Yeah, I mean, so what he's talking about here is much more of a long-term vision than we've been talking about these 30 to 50 million barrels of existing oil. Venezuela's oil production has dropped sharply from what its highs were, currently making less than a million barrels a day. It used to make more than three million barrels a day. And the infrastructure that's required to do that has really decayed. It's corroded. Things have been stolen. Things have broken. There's not power that's needed to run equipment. A lot of the expertise has left the country. It is really difficult to rebuild that kind of capacity. It's one thing to redirect the barrels that Venezuela is still managing to make. It is a totally different proposition to talk about significantly increasing how much oil the country is making. And that is clearly what President Trump wants to see. He wants the US oil companies to go in and invest billions of dollars in doing that. And he says that companies are gung-ho about that. What I am hearing from people in the oil industry is that there is a lot of caution because, one, companies lost billions of dollars in Venezuela before when contracts were forcibly renegotiated and some of their property was seized. And there is currently fairly low oil prices globally. The global benchmark is just above $60 right now. I've talked with analysts to say that the break-even price, the point you would need to make a profit in Venezuela right now, is more like $80 oil. Oh, right? That's a big difference. Yeah, it doesn't pencil out as a profitable enterprise unless there's going to be some sort of significant subsidies or incentives that are offered, right? And this is a sort of constant tension within the administration, between the administration and the oil industry, that we know President Trump loves low oil prices. The oil industry does not. The oil industry would like to see higher oil prices than the president. And to do the kind of drilling, the drill baby drill the president wants to see in the US and certainly in Venezuela, companies want a higher price to motivate that. If that is true, by the way, that President Trump spoke, as he said, before and after to the oil companies, he will have actually spoken with oil companies before speaking with lawmakers, which is an incredible thought. Yeah, and may go part of the way to explaining why the Senate today in a procedural vote with enough Republicans to get over this barrier actually are on the way to passing a war powers resolution, trying to restrict future action by the president in Venezuela, you know, largely symbolic, but the symbolism is pretty big. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely growing concern from Congress. But Franco, in terms of, you know, the long term commitment that it would take to get Venezuelan oil production up and running and get American companies in there, what is the president said about that commitment? Yeah, I mean, the president says, like, I mean, he says mixed he, he says a lot of things like many things, President gives a lot of mixed signals. Now he I will give him some credit for being practical and saying that they are in this for the long haul that they're going to be there for years, that they are not going to cut and run. At the same time, there are a lot of concerns about the costs and how much it will take, what kind of US resources will be involved. The president seems to say that it's not going to cost Americans anything because they're going to be getting so much oil out of the ground, and they're going to be able to pay for it all and get a lot of profits. In fact, he said in a recent interview with NBC that it was going to take 18 months to get the Venezuelan oil infrastructure going again. Now Camila can talk a lot more about this than I can, but that just seems tremendously hard to imagine. But it is kind of Trump's MO to say this will be easy, the money will be flowing very soon. Camila, 18 months. Yeah, I mean, in 18 months, you could increase production some, right? You can find the easy fixes, but a full restoration of Venezuelan production back to its heyday, I'm hearing that's more like a decade and many, many billions of dollars. Yeah, and I just cannot imagine Trump supporters being okay with that. I mean, this is a US oil company going into Venezuela is going to want some kind of assurances that they're going to be able to do this work. They're not going to invest billions of their own money without significant support from the American government, some type of backing that their money is going to be well spent and the president is not willing to do that or at least not explain how that is going to happen. And there are questions about governance in Venezuela right now about who's going to be in charge in the long term, about any number of things. And as you say, right now, there are no US boots on the ground, which I think a lot of people are happy about. Yeah, I mean, the Trump administration is working essentially with what's left of the Maduro regime, you know, everyone except the head. How long is the Maduro regime going to be there? Everyone seems to want elections. Well, is the new government, if a new government comes when it comes, are they going to want to be doing Trump's bidding as well? I think those are reasonable questions. Yeah, well, we're going to leave it there for today. Thank you, Camila. Thank you for having me. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordonez. I also cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.
