In the age of empires, conquest is rarely announced with flags and formal annexations. It is executed through contracts, shipping lanes, and escrow accounts. That is the essence of what the Trump administration is now openly proposing for Venezuela: the United States will control future sales of Venezuelan oil, park the proceeds in US accounts, and decide when, how, and to whom the money is released. Not occupation in name, perhaps, but certainly in function.
Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference in Miami, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright delivered the clearest articulation yet of Washington’s plan to commercialise Venezuelan crude while securing command over its most precious resource. The first barrels, he said, will come from stockpiles that have been accumulating because the American blockade has jammed exports and is now threatening to force production shut-ins. The solution, Wright explained with the breezy pragmatism of a man describing routine logistics, is simply to restart shipments and sell the oil.
Indefinitely. It is a remarkable word to use when discussing the sovereign output of another country, yet it fits perfectly within the emerging doctrine of Trump’s second term: power first, legalities later, with resources as the final prize.
The plan arrives as Washington pressures US energy companies to rebuild Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure and lift output from its current state of managed decay. To make that possible, the United States is also selectively easing certain sanctions on the sector, according to the Energy Department — the familiar choreography of coercion and concession, calibrated not for Venezuelan sovereignty but for American leverage.
It follows Trump’s announcement that Venezuela would “deliver” up to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States, worth about $2.8 billion at current prices. The White House has since claimed that the US has already begun marketing Venezuelan crude. The revenues, officials say, will be held within the US Treasury, conveniently protected from Venezuelan creditors, and ultimately used “for the benefit” of both the American and Venezuelan peoples. The language is paternal, the mechanics imperial.
Wright insisted that “we’re not stealing anyone’s oil,” while describing a system in which Washington sells Venezuela’s crude on global markets, deposits the proceeds in accounts under Venezuelan name, and decides how the money returns. This is not theft, we are told. It is supervision. A distinction that the empire has always preferred.
Notably, Wright said the revenues will not initially be used to compensate Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, and other US firms whose assets were nationalised under Hugo Chávez — a “long-term issue,” he called it, signalling that restitution remains on the agenda, just not urgently enough to interfere with the current extraction timetable.
Venezuela’s national oil company, PDVSA, has reportedly confirmed it is negotiating crude sales with Washington on a structure similar to Chevron’s sanctions waiver, the last major US producer still operating in the country. Meanwhile, American forces have reportedly seized additional sanctioned tankers, including a Russian-flagged vessel, as the administration seeks to tighten its grip over every barrel leaving Venezuelan waters. One ship was intercepted in the Atlantic south of Iceland, another in the Caribbean. This is not merely enforcement. It is a quarantine of a commodity.
Trump is now pushing Chevron, Exxon, and ConocoPhillips to rebuild Venezuela’s oil system, restart production, and monetise a resource base the country still possesses in abundance but no longer controls in practice. The President is expected to meet oil executives shortly. The White House described it as a discussion of the “immense opportunity” now available. Opportunity, here, is a euphemism for first access and protected upside.
Venezuela’s oil production remains below one million barrels a day, the residue of corruption, under-investment, and institutional collapse. Wright claims it could rise by several hundred thousand barrels per day in the short- to medium-term. But restoring the industry to something resembling its former scale would require a decade-long effort costing roughly $10 billion a year, according to Francisco Monaldi of Rice University’s Baker Institute. And oil companies, being commercial entities rather than imperial missionaries, will demand political stability, legal guarantees, and reassurance that Washington will still defend their presence when Trump is gone.
That is the true tension at the heart of this commodity war. The United States can seize ships, reroute barrels, and hold proceeds in Treasury accounts. What it cannot easily do is manufacture long-term legitimacy. Investors and companies will ask whether this arrangement survives the next administration, the next election cycle, the next geopolitical shock.
Still, the direction is clear. This is not just about Venezuela, or even oil. It is about reasserting American control over Western Hemisphere commodities and forcing China, by exclusion, to reprice its access to resources once considered “secure.” In the broader US–China contest, control of hydrocarbons, shipping, payment rails, and escrow accounts is not a sideshow. It is the battlefield.
The return of empires does not begin with annexation. It begins when a sovereign nation’s most valuable export is sold by someone else, and the proceeds are held in a foreign treasury “for its own good.”