Trump says US has received 80m barrels of Venezuelan oil; 3rd tanker seized
Al Jazeera
US forces have ‘captured’ a third oil tanker in the Indian Ocean weeks after it reportedly left Venezuelan waters.
President Donald Trump has said the United States has received “more than 80 million barrels of oil” from Venezuela, hours after the Pentagon said US forces had “captured” a third “sanctioned” oil tanker in the Indian Ocean.
“We just received from our new friend and partner, Venezuela, more than 80 million barrels of oil,” Trump announced during his State of the Union address in Washington, DC, on Tuesday night.
“American oil production is up by more than 600,000 barrels a day,” said Trump, who reiterated his promise to “drill, baby, drill” for oil as president.
Trump’s lauding of growth in the US oil sector comes after he sent special forces to conduct a bloody raid on Caracas in January and abduct Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, who had warned that Washington’s animosity towards his government was a pretext for the US to seize Venezuelan oil reserves.
The Trump administration has since promised to open up Venezuela’s oil industry to US oil companies, including Chevron, Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips, which were among several oil companies Trump hosted at the White House for a meeting about the South American country’s oil on January 9, just days after Maduro was abducted to the US.
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