After ousting Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on the weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump predicted U.S. oil companies would swoop into Venezuela, spend billions and earn huge profits for both themselves and the Venezuelan people. He then said they would “take back the oil, frankly, we should’ve taken back a long time ago.”
Venezuela has more proven oil reserves than any other country, but the question of who has the right to pump and profit from them is an open question — and comes with serious baggage.
The country nationalized its oil industry decades ago. In 2007, it expropriated most U.S. oil assets and kicked two of the three companies out of the country.
Legal fights are still ongoing over the billions of dollars those companies say Venezuela owes them in compensation. Under the circumstances, it’s not clear when or how quickly they would rush back in.
Here’s a look at what happened.
The end of U.S. influence
In 1999, Hugo Chavez became president of Venezuela. The self-described Marxist and anti-imperialist promised to reduce U.S. influence in the country.
At the time, Venezuela was producing huge amounts of oil and reaping profits to match. But a significant amount of it was controlled by three U.S. companies: ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Chevron.
In 2007, Chavez dramatically expanded the nationalization of the oil industry. He forced those companies, as well as companies from other countries, to transfer operational control of their businesses to the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PVDSA), and accept minority stakes, effectively seizing most of their assets.
After that, Venezuela owned as much as 83 per cent of the projects concentrated in the Orinoco River Basin, one of the richest and most extensively explored oil fields in the world.
ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil failed to reach agreements with the Venezuelan government, however. By the fall, they had left the country and ConocoPhillips said it had written off its $4.5 billion US investment.
Chevron stayed. Although Venezuela’s oil industry is subject to strict U.S. sanctions, Chevron is allowed to pump oil and export it under a special licence.
Claims for compensation
The move, the biggest seizure of private property in the country since Chavez took power, set off a fight for compensation that continues to this day.
ExxonMobil argued it was owed $10 billion for the seizure of its property. It made its case at a World Bank body called the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
In 2014, the ICSID ruled that Venezuela should pay ExxonMobil $1.6 billion. The amount was subsequently disputed and ExxonMobil is still seeking payment.
In a separate case before the ICSID, ConocoPhillips was awarded $8.5 billion. Venezuela appealed but was unsuccessful, with an international arbitration court upholding the decision in January 2025. However, Venezuela has not paid any of the money and ConocoPhillips says it will continue to attempt to collect.
Analysts estimate that international courts have ordered Venezuela to pay $60 billion for various claims against it.
U.S. companies going back in?
Trump’s weekend proclamation made it sound simple. Oil companies would re-enter the country, fix the neglected, ailing infrastructure and the industry would soon be back to the way it was in the early 2000s, when Venezuela was one of the top global exporters of oil.
But it’s probably more complicated than that. Venezuela’s oil infrastructure degraded badly under Chavez and Maduro and U.S. sanctions. It’s estimated it could take $100 billion or more and a decade to fix it.
