Here’s How Long Trump Plans to Run Venezuela’s Oil Industry

The U.S. will never stop being involved in Venezuela’s oil production, according to Trump administration officials.

Washington will instead continue to oversee and sell Venezuelan oil “indefinitely,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Wednesday morning, even after U.S. officials finish selling off the Latin American country’s stockpiled oil reserves.

“Instead of the oil being blockaded, as it is right now, we’re gonna let the oil flow … to United States refineries and around the world to bring better oil supplies, but have those sales done by the U.S. government,” Wright said while speaking at Goldman Sachs’s Energy, CleanTech & Utilities Conference.

“We’re going to market the crude coming out of Venezuela, first this backed-up stored oil, and then indefinitely, going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace,” he noted.

Wright added that the proceeds from the oil sales will go into “accounts controlled by the U.S. government” before supposedly flowing back to benefit the Venezuelan people.

Some of the cash is already on its way to the U.S. Trump announced Tuesday night that Wright would oversee the sale of some 50 million barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan oil, a sale that could be worth as much as $2.5 billion.

U.S. forces invaded Venezuela early Saturday, bombing its capital, Caracas, as nearly 200 American troops infiltrated the city to capture its 13-year ruler, Nicolás Maduro.

Donald Trump failed to notify Congress before the invasion but didn’t forget to tip off his friends at America’s biggest oil companies, which stand to gain the most from America’s newfound control over Venezuela’s oil supply—the largest in the world.

The invasion followed months of naval attacks and escalating rhetoric between the White House and Venezuela’s leadership, which saw the Trump administration repeatedly pin U.S. fentanyl deaths on Venezuelan drug cartels despite a resounding lack of evidence.

Venezuela nationalized its oil supply in 1976 but tightened its grip on the valuable resource during the 2000s under President Hugo Chávez, when the country stripped control and seized assets from several major oil companies, including ExxonMobil.

But a Trump-controlled Venezuela is not likely to be as hostile. Instead, Wright revealed Wednesday that he had already been in discussions with U.S. oil companies about their potential return to the Latin American nation. He emphasized, however, that returning Venezuela to pre-Chávez oil production levels would require “tens of millions of dollars and significant time.”

This story has been updated.