Following the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump declared Venezuela would give the United States between 30 million and 50 million barrels of oil. Legal experts say it’s impossible to determine the legality of Trump’s plan to take millions of barrels of oil from Venezuela because there are too many unanswered questions.
“The US claims that ‘interim authorities’ in Venezuela have agreed to this plan, through PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company, but PDVSA has only confirmed that negotiations were underway. It stopped short of saying there’s any kind of confirmed deal, so we don’t know who would own it and who would sell it,” Bracewell’s Scott Segal told Hart Energy.
Moreover, President Trump has said he would control the proceeds, but he hasn’t necessarily said that he would be a market participant, so it’s difficult to tell at this point, Segal added. “But we do know this much: We are on relative relatively uncharted territory,” he said.
