President Trump said Wednesday that Venezuela must pay for the oil assets previously seized by the South American nation, as tensions rise over the U.S. military’s action in the Caribbean.
“You remember, they took all of our energy rights. They took all of our oil from not that long ago, and we want it back,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews. “But they took it, they illegally took it.”
“They took it away because we had a president that maybe wasn’t watching, but they’re not going to do that. We want it back,” he continued later. “They took our oil rights, we had a lot of oil there, as you know, they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”
The comments come just over a week after the U.S. seized an oil tanker near Venezuela, the latest escalation in what has become an increasingly tense relationship between Trump and Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Earlier this week, Trump moved to label Maduro’s regime as a foreign terrorist organization and order the blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and leaving Venezuela.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” the president wrote Tuesday in a post on Truth Social.
“It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us,” he added.
The Venezuelan petroleum industry was largely controlled by U.S. oil companies before the country’s leaders moved to nationalize the sector beginning in the 1970s, according to The Associated Press.
Lawmakers have sounded the alarm as the Trump administration puts more pressure on Venezuela, voicing concern that the move could lead to increased conflict or even war in the region. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also faced criticism over recent strikes on alleged drug boats.
Two Democratic-led resolutions, which sought to curtail the boat strikes and the administration’s “hostilities within or against Venezuela,” were rejected by the House on Wednesday.