Trump says major oil companies will invest $100B in Venezuela ahead of White House meeting

President Donald Trump on Friday will meet with top oil industry executives at the White House in hopes of convincing them to put their respective companies’ resources into reviving the Venezuelan petroleum sector after U.S. forces captured the country’s ex- president.

Trump said in a Truth Social post that “BIG OIL” leaders will invest “at least 100 billion dollars” into Venezuela towards “rebuilding, in a much bigger, better, and more modern form, their oil and gas infrastructure.”

He also claimed Washington and Caracas have been “working well together” on rebuilding the Venezuelan oil industry in the days since Venezuelan president Darcy Rodriguez was installed following the snatching-up of longtime leader Nicolas Maduro in an audacious nighttime raid by American commandos last week.

Trump is set to meet with executives at 2:30 pm ET, the last event on his schedule before he departs the White House for a weekend of golf at his Palm Beach, Florida property.

According to the White House, executives from 17 companies will attend, including Chevron, the only company that has some current involvement in Venezuela, plus ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. The two latter companies lost control of prior projects in the country when then-president Hugo Chavez nationalized them nearly two decades ago.

Other companies understood to be sending representatives include Valero, Marathon, Shell, Halliburton Trafigura, Eni and Repsol. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are also understood to be planning to attend.

The sit-down with oil industry bigwigs comes as the president has sought to recast his administration’s decapitation of the Venezuelan government — a surprise attack that has drawn condemnation from much of the world and raised concerns in the U.S. about whether it violated U.S. laws  — as part of his efforts to lower the cost of living for Americans who polling has shown to be weary of his focus on international wheeling and dealing amid unflagging inflation and a slowing job market.

In the wake of Maduro’s shock ouster, Trump claimed the U.S. would be taking over sales of Venezuelan crude across the globe and said the government in Caracas was providing Washington with between 30 to 50 million barrels of formerly sanctioned oil to sell.

While critics have cast the move as a Trumpian do-over of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq — overthrowing the government of an oil-rich nation to install a more U.S.-friendly regime and reap financial benefits — Trump has claimed it would benefit Americans by bringing energy prices down with the aid of cheap oil from the formerly sanctioned nation.

But despite his promise of cheap oil to lower prices for Americans, he may have an uphill climb in convincing executives to throw open their coffers in a country that has been particularly inhospitable for western petroleum concerns over the past decades.

American companies have been wary of signaling any interest in getting back into Venezuela without ironclad contracts and guarantees that would prevent Caracas from interfering, though Trump has said that the U.S. government would assist with guaranteeing any investments while touting his relationship with Rodriguez.

U.S.-based shale oil producers have also cried foul over Trump’s newfound love for foreign oil, which they warn would crater the market for U.S.-produced crude at a time when the president has obsessively pursued re-shoring American industrial capabilities.