'Mobster Language': Trump Says Venezuelan Oil Will Replenish US Reserves
"I used to spend so much time trying to prove that the US was not interested in promoting democracy and just preferred autocratic governments that give us whatever we want. And now he just posts this every day on social media," one journalist wrote.
President Donald Trump was accused of naked gangsterism and revisionist history on Sunday when he announced that Venezuelan oil would be used to refill the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
"One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil is fill up the Strategic National Reserves which, because of Sleepy Joe Biden, has been virtually emptied. The 'topping out' process will begin very shortly, and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The oil in question comes from a deal announced between the governments of Trump and acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday, which would allow the US to take majority control of 65 billion barrels worth of Venezuelan oil preserves. While Rodriguez has spoken favorably of the arrangement, it is hard to know how freely she speaks and acts given that her predecessor Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped by US forces in January.
"Describing oil you are looting by force as a 'Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States' is straight mobster language," Drop Site News journalist Ryan Grim wrote on social media in response to Trump's statement on Sunday.
"No one told the demented jerk that he drained over 100 million barrels from the Strategic Reserves?"
Nathan J. Robinson, editor-in-chief of Current Affairs, also commented on the imperialism inherent in Trump's remarks, writing: "I feel like I used to spend so much time trying to prove that the US was not interested in promoting democracy and just preferred autocratic governments that give us whatever we want. And now he just posts this every day on social media."
In an article on Sunday entitled "Trump’s Venezuela Oil Grab Reprises Industry’s Neocolonial Past," Bloomberg reported that the oil deal reminded some analysts of 20th century US colonialism in Latin America.
Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez told Bloomberg that Venezuela is “functioning as a protectorate of the US in all but name,” and that the current deal “isn’t furthering the interests of Venezuelans. It’s about securing the economic and security interests of the United States.”
New York University associate history professor Alejandro Velasco, meanwhile, compared today's Venezuela with the Central American "Banana Republics" that were heavily influenced by the US-based United Fruit Company during the first half of the 20th century.
The Venezuelan people “are entirely at the whims of whatever the US government, by way of these companies, is going to give to them,” he told Bloomberg. “Venezuela is a client state now.”
Both Rodriguez, the economist, and Robinson questioned whether the deal would survive a change in Venezuela's government.
“If I were an investor in Venezuela right now, I would be asking myself if there’s going to be a government in the future that will repudiate the contracts,” Rodriguez told Bloomberg.
Robinson, meanwhile, wrote on social media, "It's obvious that a democratic Venezuela would never hand over its oil to the US, so the US actually strongly opposes democracy in Venezuela."
Other experts pointed out that Trump lied about how the Strategic Petroleum Preserve (SPR) was depleted in the first place. While President Joe Biden did drawn upon the reserve in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Trump has also relied on reserves to offset the impact of his war on Iran and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz. As of August 21, the SPR held 289.7 million barrels, a 30% decrease from the start of the year, according to the Energy Information Administration. It is supposed to fall further to 243 million barrels per Trump's orders, Drop Site News reported.
"No one told the demented jerk that he drained over 100 million barrels from the Strategic Reserves?" Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, asked on social media.
It is also unclear how quickly any Venezuelan oil could top out the SPR, given that Venezuela's oil industry has been weakened by sanctions and mismanagement and needs substantial investment and work before it can increase production, according to Reuters.
At the same time, Drop Site pointed out that Delcy Rodriguez made no mention of gifting the US oil when she laid out more details of the deal on Saturday night. According to the acting Venezuelan leader, the deal would last 25 years and the country would maintain “ownership of and sovereignty” over the oil “while leveraging capital, technology, and operational expertise to support the recovery of a strategic industry that has been severely affected by sanctions," as Reuters reported.
In response, Francisco Rodriquez outlined a series of questions about the deal, including how Delcy Rodriguez's remarks compared with Trump's.
"President Trump has also said that with immediate effect, the United States' strategic oil reserve will begin to be supplied through a gift from Venezuela. Can you explain under what conditions this gift is being made?" the economist asked the Venezuelan leader on social media on Sunday. "Which articles of the law or Constitution allow you to give away Venezuelan oil property? And if that flow begins immediately, as President Trump says, does that mean it will be supplied from current production, and therefore imply lower revenues for the national treasury in the immediate term?"
