Trump will travel to Venezuela after lifting sanctions on the country's oil.

WashingtonUS President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he will travel to Venezuela after lifting the embargo on the country's oil. However, he did not specify when. "I will visit Venezuela. We haven't set a date yet, but I will," the president said before boarding Air Force One. The United States lifted sanctions on Venezuelan oil shortly after a meeting between US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Venezuela's interim president, Delcy Rodríguez. The measure was published on the US Treasury Department's website and "authorized negotiations and the signing of conditional contracts for certain investments in Venezuela." The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also issued a list of companies with operations in the country that can resume their activities, including the Spanish company Repsol. It should be noted that the US sanctions on Venezuelan oil meant that Repsol was not paid for its gas production in the country. that are included in the list The Treasury's sanctions include the US-based Chevron, Shell, Eni, and BP. Besides allowing the resumption of operations, OFAC is also permitting other companies worldwide to make new investments in Venezuelan oil and gas. Sanctions remain in place only for dealings with Russian, Iranian, and Chinese companies.

The move to lift the sanctions comes a month after the meeting that Donald Trump held at the White House with the major oil companies, These companies were hesitant to operate within Venezuela due to the lack of legal and economic guarantees. The US president demanded that the companies make a "minimum" investment of $100 billion to begin rebuilding the necessary capacity and infrastructure in Venezuela. It costs approximately $20 to $30 billion to build an oil processing plant. In the Venezuelan case, the cost could be even higher, considering the country's limited infrastructure and the fact that much of what exists is damaged.

The oil companies' reaction

While some giants like Exxon were reluctant to venture into the company—Exxon's CEO said that "it's not currently investable"—others like Spain's Repsol, which already had existing infrastructure and had continued operating under the Chavista regime, were willing to get involved. "We are in Venezuela, Mr. President, with our partners at Eni. We produce the gas that guarantees the stability of half of Venezuela's clean electricity generation," stated the company's CEO, Josu Jon Imaz, during the meeting. "We are committed to this stability. And we are also on the ground: we have personnel, we have facilities, we have technical capabilities," he emphasized. This week, Imaz again referred to Trump's plan for oil companies in Venezuela. "It's important for Repsol, but above all for the country [Venezuela]," the executive reflected at a forum organized by the IESE Business School and Deloitte in Madrid. The CEO reiterated Repsol's "commitment" to continue working to increase oil production in the Latin American country. The Spanish company is one of the major oil companies in Venezuela—excluding Russian and Chinese companies, Repsol is the second largest producer after Chevron—and has therefore asserted its importance. "Those of us on the ground with the assets and resources must be able to invest to increase production," he argued. "Venezuela needs economic and social stability," the executive insisted, adding that in recent weeks "doubts [about the country's future] had dissipated." It is also worth noting that this move follows Colombian President Gustavo Petro's visit to Washington last week. The face-to-face meeting with Trump, which was expected to be explosive, It turned out to be a calm sea full of sympathy and giftsThe positive atmosphere of the closed-door meeting between the two leaders was explained later, when the former anti-imperialist guerrilla fighter appeared at a press conference to explain that he had extended an olive branch to Washington to extract Venezuelan oil. Petro presented it as a plan to help reactivate Venezuela's economy, where Colombia—which shares a border—could act as an outlet for the crude oil extracted by the companies. "We have seen how Venezuela could be reactivated with Colombia's help," Petro stated, also hinting at the participation of the Colombian state oil company Ecopetrol, but declining to provide details. Petro asserted that he had already had energy-related contacts with Venezuela in the preceding months and that, after the capture of Nicolás Maduro, "the United States saw an immediate opportunity to lift sanctions on the West [the border region between Colombia and Venezuela] and open the possibility for Ecopetrol to participate." The Colombian president drew an analogy with the work plumbers do to repair pipes when explaining the future restoration of the gas pipelines, oil pipelines, and electrical connections already built in the border area.

"It's not a question of how Ecopetrol enters Venezuela; that's a later issue. [...] What it's about is how the border is structured, which is like tying up pipes. It's like at your house with the plumber, who closes the pipes and then either connects them to the three countries—Venezuela, Colombia—or leaves them in the country, or reconnects them. The question is where these types of goods are sold. And in that regard, let's say the proposals from the United States are on the table," explained Petro, who assured that the proposals have been on the table for years with both the Colombian company Ecopetrol and Venezuelan companies.