Venezuela's Dictators Nationalized Their Oil for Venezuela, New Dictator Trump's 'Nationalizing' Their Oil For Himself

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Last edited Mon Jan 12, 2026, 04:56 PM - Edit history (1)

Donald Trump States He Is Inclined to Keep ExxonMobil Out of Venezuela After CEO Darren Woods Calls Country Uninvestable

During a White House meeting with oil industry leaders, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods described Venezuela as 'uninvestable' under current conditions. Trump, criticized ExxonMobil for being 'too cute' in their response to his quasi-control if Venezuela's energy sector following his military attacks and kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro.

Trump:

“I’d probably be inclined to keep Exxon out. I didn’t like their response. They’re playing too cute.”


...some history:

In 1976, Venezuela took control of the assets of ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron, using them to create the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela. Unlike sudden nationalizations elsewhere at the time, this process was a negotiated transition after decades of incremental policy shifts.

Mr. Chávez embarked on another nationalization phase in 2007, with the aim of dismantling the opening of the oil industry in the 1990s, which had allowed international oil companies to again put down stakes in Venezuela.

Even though Mr. Chávez allowed the foreign companies to remain in Venezuela on less favorable terms, this nationalization was more contentious, setting off protracted legal battles with U.S. oil giants like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, which claimed they were owed billion of dollars in compensation.

Some of the ill will from this process involved Mr. Chávez’s push to situate oil at the heart of his revolution. He purged political opponents from Petróleos de Venezuela and transformed the company into a cash cow for antipoverty programs at home and political alliances with other countries, like Cuba, that chafed at the power of the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/world/americas/trump-venezuela-oil-fields-stolen-claims.html

...that's the irony in an American president today posturing as if he can just dole out Venezuela's oil resources like he personally owns them - essentially declaring he's nationalizing Venezuelan's oil for the United States - but being rebuffed by the very U.S. based oil giant he's pretending to avenge; mainly because Trump's thuggery and imperialism has caused the very unrest that made operating in that country a dicey, dangerous enterprise that wasn't worth their investment.

What Trump wants is some grand scheme to cover for his blundering imperialism. It shouldn't surprise anyone that a man who is not only ignorant of history, but actually antagonistic to history that doesn't give fealty to him personally, doesn't have a clue about what anyone else actually expects or wants to happen in that country.

Every day that passes, Trump endeavors to make more clear that he intends to be the new dictator of Venezuela, by hook or crook. This isn't about drug trafficking, or drug gangs, or any of the lurid charges Trump has repeatedly projected against the Venezuelans in this country and in their own.

It's not even about oil, with it becoming increasingly clear that Trump's military interference has deepened and exacerbated the reasons U.S. and other oil giants find it so difficult to make a profit there.

This invasion of Venezuela may well be the culmination of manipulation and graft by interests looking to profit from the militarization, but from this American president's view, it's about his self-aggrandizement ensconced in one unsupportable justification after the other.

It should be obvious to everyone looking on how craven he is to be crowned king of the Americas by his latest threat to again attack Venezuela, bomb the government that remains in place who he's expecting and demanding do his bidding, if they don't comply.

Despite the people of Venezuela celebrating the removal of one autocratic, brutal leader, they are actually under the thumb of a more dangerous and self-interested tyrant who doesn't even reside there, auguring to not only steal their resources, but subjugate them to his imperialistic thievery.

Americans who even remotely support this need to ask themselves what it is that they regard about Venezuelans that they believe their president is justified in subjugating them to our own will and whim, all indifferent and even hostile to the interests of the people there.

But more importantly, where is the morality in this assault upon and rape of Venezuela in which the most prominent component is American avarice, and the most glaring consequence and result is murder and thievery; all to the detriment of everyone except the man in the WH aggrandizing himself behind everyone else's sacrifices?

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