Large US companies to spend billions on oil infrastructure in Venezuela, says Trump

Jay Jackson
04 Jan 2026, 03:01 GMT+10

While Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife are being shipped to a Federal prison in New York City, after being abducted by U.S, forces in the early hours of Saturday morning, President Donald Trump has announced the U.S. will run Venezuela until "a safe, proper and judicious transition" of power.

He says U.S. oil companies will be brought in to fix the country's massive oil infrastructure, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world.

"We're going to have our very large U.S. oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country," Trump said..

The president was speaking at a press conference Saturday morning at Mar-a-Lago golf club which he owns, in Palm Beach, Florida.

Asked whether the U.S. would send in ground troops, he said he wasn't afraid of boots on the ground. Asked about opposition figure Maria Corina Machado, President Trump said it would be hard for her to lead as she didn't have popular "respect."

"That alone will signal to some in Venezuela, particularly Machado's supporters, that Trump isn't serious about shoring up Venezuela for a democratic or just future, but rather to plunder its oil wealth," Tom Bateman, the BBC's U.S. State Department correspondent said Saturday.

While Venezuelans have had their president snatched from their country in the dead of night, and have been told the U.S. will now run their country, Cubans too received a note of cautiopn.

In response to a question from a journalist from Cuba, at the press conference, the U.S. president said: "Cuba is going to be something we'll end up talking about."

"We want to help the people in Cuba, we want to also help the people that were forced out of Cuba."

At this point, Secretary of State Marco Rubio added, "when the president speaks, you should take him seriously." He noted that Maduro's primary security detail consisted mainly of Cubans.

"If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I'd be concerned at least," the U.S. secretary of state said.