US President Donald Trump announced that American oil companies will begin exploring for oil in Venezuela “soon.”
“We’re going to start drilling very soon. We have the biggest companies in the world. We have them. And they’re going to come in,” he declared this Thursday (22), adding that this work should generate “a lot of money” for the US and Venezuela.
On Tuesday, Trump reported that, in four days, the country removed 50 billion barrels of oil from Caracas to sell them on the legal market
“We took 50 million barrels of oil out of Venezuela in the first four days. We still have millions of barrels of oil. We are selling it on the open market. We are lowering oil prices,” he told reporters at the White House.
That same day, Venezuela’s interim dictator, Delcy Rodríguez, said that Caracas received US$300 million as part of the first sale of Venezuelan oil to the US.
According to Rodríguez, the amount – corresponding to part of a US$500 million “agreement” – entered the country’s coffers and will be used to “protect workers’ income”, combat inflation and mitigate the negative effects of fluctuations in the currency market.
A US government source told Reuters that Washington authorized China to buy Venezuelan oil, but now for a “fair price” and not for a “corrupt and cheap” value as was done before in the clandestine fleet, interrupted by American forces in international waters.
