Trump Administration Reportedly Sets Meetings With Oil Companies Over Venezuela

The upcoming meetings will be crucial to the administration's hopes to boost crude oil production and exports from Venezuela.

WASHINGTON/HOUSTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - The administration of President Donald Trump is planning to meet with executives from U.S. oil companies later this week to discuss boosting Venezuelan oil production after U.S. forces ousted its leader, Nicolas Maduro, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The meetings are crucial to the administration’s hopes of getting top U.S. oil companies back into the South American nation after its government, nearly two decades ago, took control of U.S.-led energy operations there.

The three biggest U.S. oil companies - Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron - have not yet had any conversations with the administration about Maduro’s ouster, according to four oil industry executives familiar with the matter, contradicting Trump’s statements over the weekend that he had already held meetings with “all” the U.S. oil companies, both before and since Maduro was seized.

“Nobody in those three companies has had conversations with the White House about operating in Venezuela, pre-removal or post-removal to this point,” one of the sources said on Monday.

The upcoming meetings will be crucial to the administration’s hopes to boost crude oil production and exports from Venezuela, a former OPEC nation which sits atop the world’s largest reserves and whose barrels can be refined by specially designed U.S. refineries. Achieving that goal will require years of work and billions of dollars of investment, analysts say.