Venezuela Oil Key to Trump’s $50-a-Barrel Price Plan
The president is said to expect that lower prices will help reduce energy costs for consumers at home.
Donald Trump is reportedly planning to use Venezuela’s vast crude reserves to seize control of most of the Western Hemisphere’s oil in a bid to drive market prices down to around $50 (£37) a barrel, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing senior Trump administration officials.
The US president has repeatedly raised the prospect of Venezuela producing enough crude oil from its oil fields to bring US oil prices down from $56 a barrel to around $50 today in an effort to lower energy costs for consumers.
A glut of crude oil has caused significant losses in global oil markets in recent years. Prices fell by almost 20% in 2025, the biggest annual loss since the Covid-19 pandemic and the first time the oil market has recorded three consecutive years of annual losses.
In addition to driving down market prices, officials have reported that Trump’s plans to take control of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the world’s largest, include reducing Russia’s and China’s access to the South American country in order to establish an oil production stronghold in the Western Hemisphere.
The White House confirmed on Wednesday that the US plans to control Venezuelan oil sales “indefinitely” after claiming 50 million barrels of blocked crude oil.
According to US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the oil, currently held in tankers and storage, is worth up to $3 billion (the proceeds from its sale on the global market will be used to “benefit the Venezuelan people”).
On Wednesday, Trump said that Venezuela would only be allowed to use the profits from any deal with Washington to buy US-made goods.
“I just learned that Venezuela will only be buying American-made products with the money they receive from our new oil deal,” he said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
The US claimed ownership of the crude oil this week, which had been subject to sanctions, and also seized a Russian oil tanker linked to Venezuela after a two-week search.
If Trump were to increase Venezuela’s oil production from 1 million barrels per day (bpd), which is less than 1% of global demand, to its previous peak of nearly 3 million bpd, he would bring US domestic production to approximately 14 million bpd.
This is roughly one-third of the 40 million bpd output of the OPEC+ alliance countries.
However, it is doubtful whether Trump can revive Venezuela’s struggling oil industry after decades of underinvestment and corruption.
The president has promised that US oil companies will return to the country and spend billions of dollars upgrading its infrastructure and increasing production.
But companies like Chevron, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips are reportedly hesitant.
Trump said this week that if US oil companies invest in Venezuela, they could be “reimbursed by us or through revenue.”
But officials have reportedly told the Financial Times that they would want “serious guarantees” from the Trump administration before investing billions of dollars to increase Venezuelan crude production.
“Nobody wants to go there when a random tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country,” a private equity investor specializing in energy told the FT.
Oil company executives met with US officials at an industry conference in Miami, Florida, on Wednesday and are scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House on Friday.
