For weeks, Trump and senior US officials said Washington’s rhetoric and military posture toward Venezuela were aimed at stopping narcotics trafficking.
But evidence cited by Venezuelan authorities and comments by Trump following the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro pointed instead to Venezuela’s oil, which holds the world’s largest proven reserves at an estimated 303 billion barrels.
Initially, the White House framed Saturday’s actions against Caracas as a counter-narcotics operation, with US officials describing it as the arrest of “two indicted fugitives” on trafficking charges.
Maduro has been indicted in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on charges including alleged “narco-terrorism conspiracy and cocaine importation conspiracy,” which he has repeatedly denied.
Meanwhile, Venezuelan officials said US attacks on Caracas killed dozens of civilians as well as officials and military personnel, a claim Washington has rejected.
Within hours, Trump publicly pivoted from the drug narrative to oil and US control over Venezuela’s energy sector.
Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump said the United States would “run the country” for now, rebuild oil infrastructure and “take out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground” to sell on global markets, including to rivals China and Russia.
Maduro has consistently condemned Washington for using drug allegations as a pretext to seize Venezuela’s oil and other natural resources.
At the same time, the Trump administration has labelled fentanyl allegedly trafficked from Venezuela a “weapon of mass destruction” and has carried out strikes on vessels accused of moving narcotics.
“I think what the Trump administration is saying is that we need to priorities the recovery of the oil sector and get the economy on a manageable basis so that we think about more orderly political transition,” a former official said.
“But if you try to directly hand over the power to the opposition right now without having set the basis for economic recovery, that can actually be quite dangerous and lead to chaos.”
Impact on OPEC and global oil markets
Analysts say the immediate implications for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) remain limited, though longer-term consequences could be significant.
Venezuela cannot rapidly increase production because of ageing infrastructure, and unilateral US seizures of tankers near Venezuelan waters have so far caused only brief spikes in oil prices before stabilization.
Venezuela’s upstream oil sector, particularly under state-run PDVSA, has endured more than a decade of underinvestment.
Many wells are mechanically compromised, restarting shut-in production often requires full workovers or redrilling, and routine maintenance largely halted after US embargoes.
In addition, crude exports depend on diluents that are blocked by US restrictions, while storage, blending and upgrading facilities remain bottlenecked and operate well below capacity.
If a US-aligned government in Caracas were eventually able to lift output sharply, OPEC could face oversupply or be forced to revise production quotas.
Such a shift would give Washington indirect but substantial leverage over the cartel and global oil supply, unsettling a balance producers have sought to maintain for years.