Trump Plans Venezuela Visit as Oil Deals Reshape Ties

Six weeks after U.S. forces seized Nicolás Maduro in a predawn Caracas raid, the man who ordered it says he wants to visit as a friend. President Donald Trump told White House reporters on Friday he plans to travel to Venezuela, offering no date. He would be the first sitting U.S. president to go there since 1997.

The tone was strikingly warm. Trump praised interim president Delcy Rodríguez — Maduro’s former deputy — and confirmed Washington now formally recognizes her government. Asked whether he considered her the legitimate authority, he said the U.S. already does.

The diplomatic reset is inseparable from oil. On the same day, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued general licenses allowing BP, Chevron, Eni, Repsol and Shell to resume operations in Venezuela — the most significant rollback of sanctions since Washington imposed its oil embargo in 2019. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who visited Caracas earlier in the week and met Rodríguez at the Miraflores presidential palace, declared the embargo “essentially over.”

The stakes are enormous. Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves but produced just 1.2 million barrels per day in 2025, a fraction of the 3 million it pumped 25 years ago. Trump has set a target of $100 billion in foreign energy investment and wants ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips — whose assets were nationalized under Hugo Chávez in 2007 — to return. Revenue from oil sales is being routed through U.S.-controlled accounts.

Not everyone sees partnership. UN human rights experts warned that U.S. control of Venezuela’s resources violates the principle of self-determination. Legal scholars called the January 3 operation — which killed over 100 security personnel — a clear breach of international law. Brazil, Spain, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay jointly condemned it.

Rodríguez, for her part, has moved quickly to accommodate Washington: freezing oil shipments to Cuba, advancing legal reforms to open the energy sector to foreign companies, and releasing hundreds of political prisoners. Whether this cooperation makes her a transitional leader building toward democracy or a pragmatist operating under extraordinary duress depends entirely on who is telling the story.

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