President Donald Trump is hosting a group of top oil executives at the White House to discuss investment in Venezuela following the military’s successful capture of the nation’s dictatorial president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife over the weekend.
“Following the announcement of President Trump’s historic energy deal with Venezuela, American oil companies will come to the White House to discuss investment opportunities that will restore Venezuelan oil infrastructure,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital Friday morning.
“The American people, energy companies, and the Venezuelan people will all greatly benefit from these new, unprecedented investments in Venezuela’s oil infrastructure thanks to President Trump.”
Fox News Digital learned that the lengthy lineup of oil companies include: Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Continental, Halliburton, HKN, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Trafigura, Vitol Americas, Repsol, Eni, Aspect Holdings, Tallgrass, Raisa Energy and Hilcorp.
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Trump will be joined by a handful of Cabinet members as well, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.
Trump announced a successful strike on Venezuela Saturday morning in a military operation that did not kill any U.S. military personnel, and led to the arrests of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on sweeping narcotics charges. The couple was transported to New York City and pleaded not guilty in the case during their arraignments on Monday.
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They are being held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Venezuela is an oil-rich nation, with Trump announcing shortly after the operation that the U.S. would “run” the South American nation, without going into details about what that would entail.
He announced on social media Tuesday that Venezuelan oil will immediately be turned over to the U.S., including “between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America.”
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“This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States! I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan, immediately. It will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States,” Trump wrote.
He added that through the deal, “Venezuela is going to be purchasing ONLY American Made Products, with the money they receive from our new Oil Deal.”
Trump told The New York Times Wednesday in a lengthy interview that he anticipated the U.S. will run Venezuela and extract oil from its reserves for years.
Chevron is currently the only U.S. oil company operating in Venezuela, Fox Business previously reported, while ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil had operations in the country before the regime nationalized their assets.
The oil leaders are expected to discuss plans for investing in Venezuela to allow oil production to ramp up in the country.
Fox Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.
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