(Photo by Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images via AFP)President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would allow American oil companies to go into Venezuela to tap its massive crude reserves after a US military operation seized its leader, Nicolas Maduro. Trump also said that “the embargo on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect.”Washington imposed economic sanctions on Venezuela in 2017, followed by oil sanctions two years later. Venezuelan oil is of lower quality and is mostly processed into diesel or byproducts such as asphalt, rather than gasoline. The United States has refineries around the Gulf of Mexico specifically designed to handle it. “The United States is doing just fine without Venezuelan oil,” Stephen Schork, an analyst at consulting firm the Schork Group, told AFP last month, pointing to political reasons instead.

Source: Punch January 04, 2026 08:57 UTC