After calling Venezuela under current conditions “uninvestable”, Exxon CEO Darren Woods went on to say, “we are confident that with this administration and President Trump working hand in hand with the Venezuelan government, that those changes can be put in place.”
This sounds like “not now”, while hand waving that in some hypothetical further situation in which an improbably sweeping suite of reforms are enacted somehow without any further US expenditure, military threat or boots on the ground, sure, we’ll consider it.
Mr Woods was participating in a discussion at the White House between President Trump and a collection of the world’s most senior Oil executives.
As I mentioned in a post yesterday, Trump’s Venezuela policy is a preposterous fantasy. Nothing in today’s meeting would indicate leading Oil executives assess it any differently.
Trump administration officials have outlined a sweeping but bare-bones plan to take over Venezuela’s lucrative oil industry and have said they expect the country’s new leaders to follow orders from Washington. Mr. Trump has said that U.S. oversight of the country could last years.
In the meeting with American oil executives, Mr. Trump said their companies would “rapidly rebuild Venezuela’s dilapidated oil industry and bring millions of barrels of oil production to benefit the United States, the people of Venezuela and the entire world.” He said that U.S. oil companies would invest at least $100 billion in Venezuela.
But it is not clear that oil executives are prepared to commit to that investment.
Darren Woods, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, the largest U.S. oil company, emphasized the opportunities that Venezuela presents — and the big hurdles it would need to clear to return to the country.
“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,” Mr. Woods said at the White House meeting. “Today it’s uninvestable.”
He said that Exxon Mobil was prepared to send an exploratory team to Venezuela within the next few weeks if it received security guarantees.
Other executives were similarly cautious.
When pressed by the president, Harold Hamm, one of his closest oil-industry allies, also stopped short of committing to work in Venezuela.
“It excites me as an explorationist,” he said. “Everybody has that in their blood.” But, he added, Venezuela has “got its challenges.”
Some oil executives have privately discussed the possibility of seeking some form of financial guarantee from the federal government before agreeing to establish or expand production in Venezuela, according to people familiar with their thinking.
Oil executives are concerned about political instability in Venezuela, since oil investments are often measured in decades, and companies would need to be confident that any deal would last long enough for them to turn a worthwhile profit.
Hilarious Financial Times read here: (paywalled)
UPDATE:
This is rich. Secretary Wright tells Fox News companies don’t want money, they just want “the US to use our leverage to make business conditions in Venezuela conducive for operations”.
“Some oil executives have privately discussed the possibility of seeking some form of financial guarantee from the federal government before agreeing to establish or expand production in Venezuela, according to people familiar with their thinking.”
I don’t picture such things being ‘guaranteed’ for long given that the majority in the House is razor thin today and the Republicans are starting (finally) to rebel a little bit (or retire). Add in the Senate realizing they have a job that doesn’t involve just nodding when a President says something – that driven home a bit by the double-crosses from appointees like RFK Jr. lying to Sen Cassidy about vaccination policies. So you’ve got a Republican Louisiana US Senator already burned – and the entire party now about to face anger from voters losing their Obamacare subsidies. So it’s buck the President on that (and a Beautiful Bill they passed) or even the Senate looks shakier.
“Oil executives are concerned about political instability in Venezuela, since oil investments are often measured in decades, and companies would need to be confident that any deal would last long enough for them to turn a worthwhile profit.”
Again, the same executives should also look at political stability in the country they are based in as well, and also at the fact that giant investments in Venezuela, for hard-to-process crude, when global demand for oil is nearing stasis?
Next up, I guess, is Trump swears that seizing Greenland will instantly result in vast mineral wealth on the undeveloped, frozen-in-winter territories.