Alwaght- The US President Donald Trump has recently called on Venezuela to return the asserts Caracas years ago seized from American oil companies. Responding to a question about his newest tactic of maximum pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Trump has referred to the US lost investments in this Latin American country, adding that his government’s actions against Venezuela are driven by disputes over oil investment of the American companies in this country.
American oil corporations long held sway over Venezuela’s petroleum industry, a dominance the South American nation moved to end on at least two historic occasions. The first push for nationalization came in the early 1970s. Decades later, under the leadership of Hugo Chávez in the 21st century, the government moved decisively to nationalize its energy reserves.
This long-simmering dispute has repeatedly flared in international courts. In 2014, a global arbitration panel ordered Venezuela to pay $1.6 billion in compensation to the American giant ExxonMobil. Caracas refused, countering that ExxonMobil had already reaped multi-billion dollar profits during its time operating in the country.
The Trump administration has aggressively revived these historical grievances. Trump and key officials have framed Venezuela’s actions not as sovereign policy but as theft. Stephen Miller, Trump’s Homeland Security Advisor, channeled this view in a stark social media post, alleging: “American genius and toil built the Venezuelan oil industry. Its ruthless seizure was the greatest theft of American wealth and assets ever recorded. These looted assets then funded terrorism, mercenaries & narcotics.”
Venezuela oil nationalization process
Venezuela first moved to nationalization in 1970s. This took momentum under late President Chavez later in 1990s. He nationalized hundreds of private businesses and assets of foreigners, especially the Americans, including oil projects under ExxonMobil and ConocoPhilips.
However, Trump censured his predecessors for not taking strict measures against Venezuela regarding the assert seizures.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday that Venezuela had illegally taken away “energy rights” and that the US wanted them back. “We’re getting land, oil rights, whatever we had. They took it away because we had a president that maybe wasn’t watching. But they’re not going to do that. We want it back. They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there. As you know, they threw our companies out and we want it back.”
Trumps paradoxes
While Donald Trump and his allies accuse Venezuela’s government of committing the “greatest theft of American assets,” a US oil giant is legally and smoothly drilling for crude in the country under a 2022 special license from the US Treasury Department.
Chevron, the Texas-based energy major, resumed and has continued its operations in Venezuela under a sanctions waiver granted by the US government.
Furthermore, the financial dispute between Venezuela and Chevron appears to be actively de-escalating. Francisco Monaldi, a leading expert on Venezuelan oil at Rice University in Houston, told CNBC that Venezuela’s debt to Chevron “has come down significantly. It’s not a big amount.”
The arch-thief
The White House is labeling Venezuela oil nationalization a theft of American assets while over the past month, the American forces have seized at least three oil tankers belonging to the Venezuelan government.
In a letter to the UN, Maduro asserted the US actions against his country are a “blockade and piracy”, violating all international laws.
Venezuelan Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez, referred to the US stealing of the country’s oil, issuing a sharp rebuke of US allegations regarding the “theft” of the country’s oil and declaring that Caracas’s crude shipments “were transported in strict compliance with regulations and based on national and international laws, with no legal impediment whatsoever.”
However, the rise in the seizure of Venezuelan tankers shows that Trump respects no law and principle.
It remains unclear how long the US intends to keep the tankers under seizure, or what it plans to do with their cargo and the vessels themselves. However, according to a US source, unlike a similar case a few weeks earlier, American authorities did not have a seizure warrant for this tanker, underscoring the unlawful nature of Washington’s actions in the Caribbean.
US oil blockade against Venezuela illegal
Meanwhile, the theft and confiscation of Venezuelan oil by the Trump administration took place even as The New York Times reported that the seized Venezuelan tanker, Centuries, was not on the US Treasury Department’s sanctions list. According to the report, citing two informed sources, the tanker’s cargo belongs to a well-known China-based trader with a track record of shipping Venezuelan crude to Chinese refineries.
The newspaper added that the vessel had recently departed Venezuela and was operating in Caribbean waters at the time it was intercepted.
So, the American newspaper’s report confirms that the US has had not even the pretext of international sanctions to impose blockade on Venezuelan oil and so tankers were intercepted on the high seas in violation of international laws.
