The United States may subsidise oil companies to enable them to rebuild Venezuela’s energy infrastructure, US president Donald Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Monday.
Mr Trump told NBC that such a project could take less than 18 months.
“I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money,” Mr Trump said. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”
It comes after US military action in Venezuela, which saw air strikes carried out and the capture of president Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores.
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Mr Trump also said the US was not at war with Venezuela.
The comments underscore the administration’s view that Venezuela’s vast oil reserves are central to both its recovery and US strategic interests.
However, Mr Trump has offered few specifics on how production would be restored or who would control revenues in the interim. Large oil companies have said little about their desire to resume operations there.
Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has effectively been running Venezuela since Mr Maduro’s capture, has offered to work with the United States.
Washington has said it will maintain an economic blockade of the country to force it into complying with its demands.
On Sunday, Mr Trump warned the US might launch a second strike if remaining members of the administration did not co-operate with his efforts to get the country “fixed”.
Speaking on Monday, he claimed that he would not need the consent of politicians to act in order for him to send US troops back into Venezuela.
Among the demands Mr Trump as made to the Chavista regime in Caracas is it must open up Venezuela’s oil industry to US companies.
Earlier, the US president had threatened that Mr Maduro’s former vice-president, Ms Rodríguez, saying she could “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” if she did not bend to his wishes. Mr Trump said Venezuela will not have elections in the next 30 days.
The threat was just one of a series made by Mr Trump and his officials since Saturday’s attack on Venezuela. They have also made menacing statements targeting Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and the Danish territory of Greenland.
Meanwhile, an unknown individual made a profit of around $410,000 (€350,000) on Polymarket, a cryptocurrency-based “prediction market” where users can place wagers on a broad variety of future events, after betting that Mr Maduro would be ousted from his position.
The anonymous account was created last month, with the trader buying up $96 worth of contracts on December 27th that would pay off if the US invaded Venezuela by January 31st.
Several more similar bets where made through the account in the following days. Those wagers, which were worth about $34,000 prior to Maduro’s capture, surged in value after news of the US military operation on the Venezuelan leader emerged, according to Polymarket data.
The mystery trade is likely to attract scrutiny from US politicians who have been pushing for stricter insider trading rules. - Reuters/Bloomberg
