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Donald Trump has said he might block ExxonMobil from investing in Venezuela after the oil company’s chief executive called the country “uninvestable” during a White House meeting last week.
Darren Woods told the US president that Venezuela would need to change its laws before it could be an attractive investment opportunity, during the high-profile meeting on Friday with at least 17 other oil executives.
Trump had urged the group to spend $100bn to revitalise Venezuela’s oil industry in a meeting less than a week after US forces captured and removed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from power in a brazen overnight raid.
Woods’ sceptical remarks quickly emerged as the dominant headline, undercutting the White House’s hopes of building momentum from its engagement with the world’s most prominent oil executives.
“I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on his way back to Washington on Sunday. “I’ll probably be inclined to keep Exxon out. I didn’t like their response. They’re playing too cute.”
Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Exxon, ConocoPhillips and Chevron – the three largest US oil producers – were for decades the most prominent partners of Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA.
The government of late president Hugo Chávez nationalised the industry between 2004 and 2007, and while Chevron negotiated deals to partner with PDVSA, ConocoPhillips and Exxon left the country and filed for prominent arbitration cases shortly after.
Venezuela now owes over $13bn collectively to ConocoPhillips and Exxon for the expropriations, according to court rulings.
Woods told Trump on Friday: “We’ve had our assets seized there twice, and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we’ve historically seen here.”
Exxon’s CEO said the company needed durable investment protections introduced and that the country’s hydrocarbons law also needed to be reformed.
“If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela today, it’s uninvestable,” he said.
ConocoPhillips’ CEO, Ryan Lance, told Trump that his company was the largest non-sovereign credit holder in Venezuela, and called for a restructuring of the debt and the country’s entire energy system, including PDVSA.
Trump said ConocoPhillips would get a lot of its money back, but the US would start with a clean slate. “We’re not going to look at what people lost in the past because that was their fault,” he said.
Trump said on Friday that his administration would decide which firms would be allowed to operate in the South American country.
“You’re dealing with us directly. You’re not dealing with Venezuela at all,” he said. “We don’t want you to deal with Venezuela.”
On Saturday, Trump signed an executive order to block courts or creditors from seizing revenue tied to the sale of Venezuelan oil held in US Treasury accounts.
