Several oil companies in the United States are skeptical about investing in Venezuela's enormous oil reserves. ExxonMobil and several other representatives of major oil companies in the United States met with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday.
ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods believes that major reforms are needed in Venezuela before the company is ready to return to the South American country.
- We have had our assets seized there twice, and you can imagine that going in a third time would require some quite significant changes, says Darren Woods.
- If we look at the legal and commercial structures and frameworks that are in place in Venezuela today, it is not possible to invest there, he adds.
The meeting at the White House took place less than a week after US forces moved into Venezuela and took President Nicolás Maduro prisoner.
Trump wants control of oil
Trump has made no secret of the fact that control over Venezuela's oil was a central part of the reason for the military action.
Nor did ConocoPhillips commit to operating in Venezuela at Friday's meeting.
According to the Reuters news agency, Chevron said that the company is ready to increase production in Venezuela by about 50 percent within the next 18-24 months. Chevron is currently the only American company licensed to operate in Venezuela.
ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips pulled out in 2007 after refusing demands from then-President Hugo Chávez to cede majority control to the state.
Venezuela has a fifth of the world's oil reserves, but the country extracts only 0.8 percent of the oil extracted globally.
This is due, among other things, to the fact that successive governments have neglected the maintenance of the infrastructure surrounding the oil industry, and that the industry has lacked international investment and been hit by foreign sanctions.
Donald Trump says at the White House meeting that it will be his administration that will decide which oil companies are allowed to operate in Venezuela.
Trump says that the oil companies must "negotiate directly with us", signaling that the US government will try to keep Venezuela out of the process, when it comes to the exploitation of the country's own oil reserves.
/ritzau/AFP
Text, graphics, images, sound, and other content on this website are protected under copyright law. DK Medier reserves all rights to the content, including the right to exploit the content for the purpose of text and data mining, cf. Section 11b of the Copyright Act and Article 4 of the DSM Directive.
Customers with IP agreements/major customer agreements may only share Danish Offshore Industry articles internally for the purpose of handling specific cases. Sharing in connection with specific cases refers to journaling, archiving, or similar uses.
Customers with a personal subscription/login may not share Danish Offshore Industry articles with individuals who do not themselves have a personal subscription to Danish Offshore Industry.
Any deviation from the above requires written consent from DK Medier.
