President Donald Trump has revived a provocative argument to justify escalating U.S. pressure on Venezuela: that the South American nation “stole” American oil and must now return it.
The claim followed a dramatic U.S. operation that, according to the White House, was aimed at disrupting narcotics trafficking and dismantling Venezuela’s leadership. But reporting by The New York Times and The Washington Post suggests the action also capped weeks of rhetoric from Trump and his advisers framing Venezuela’s vast oil reserves as improperly taken from American companies decades ago.
In a series of Truth Social posts, Trump asserted that Venezuela owes the United States its oil fields, land, and other assets. “We had a lot of oil there,” he wrote. “They threw our companies out, and we want it back.”
Historians and economists describe a far more complicated story.
American oil companies first entered Venezuela in the early 20th century under the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez, when foreign firms were granted sweeping concessions. By midcentury, U.S. and European companies controlled nearly all of the country’s oil production, operating self-contained English-speaking “oil camps” that functioned as enclaves within Venezuela.
The first major nationalization came in 1976 under President Carlos Andrés Pérez, amid a global wave of resource nationalism that included Saudi Arabia and Mexico. Venezuela created its state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., and assumed control of operations previously run by Exxon, Mobil, and Shell.
According to The Washington Post, those firms lost billions in assets but were compensated roughly $1 billion each. The transition was largely negotiated, and companies did not mount major legal challenges, in part because modern arbitration mechanisms were limited.
Relations soured sharply in 2007 under President Hugo Chávez, who launched a new round of nationalizations in the oil-rich Orinoco Belt to finance his socialist agenda. Some companies, including Chevron, accepted minority stakes to remain. Others, notably ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, refused and exited Venezuela.
International tribunals later awarded ConocoPhillips $8.7 billion and ExxonMobil $1.6 billion in compensation—sums Venezuela has struggled to pay amid economic collapse.
For many Venezuelans, as the Times noted, oil is not merely a commodity but a national birthright, making Trump’s claim of outright theft as politically charged as it is historically disputed.
