Oil giant tells Trump it’s ‘too expensive’ to reinvest in Venezuela despite president’s urging

The CEO of a major oil company has said that it is “too expensive and too polluting” to return operations to Venezuela, despite the urging of Donald Trump.

TotalEnergies boss Patrick Pouyanne said the company had pulled out of the South American country “because it clashed with our strategy. It was too expensive and too polluting and that is still the case.”

The French multinational energy company left Venezuela in 2022 but, along with others, faced pressure to return from Trump following the U.S. military operations to capture the ousted president Nicolas Maduro on January 3.

Following the high-octane removal of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores from their home in Caracas, Trump said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela until the country was stable enough for democratic elections.

He also urged U.S. energy firms to invest $100 billion to rebuild Venezuela's oil industry, pledging to support them, and claiming that previous problems were “because they didn’t have Trump as a president.”

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The announcement by Pouyanne is somewhat unsurprising, after he previously said that TotalEnergies was in no rush to return to Venezuela.

"People want to rush back, but it will require a clear framework to be able to invest there and it will take time," Pouyanne said at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week in mid-January.

"Maybe you could easily add 100,000 or 200,000 barrels per day of additional production, but if you think about adding 1 million barrels per day, it will require $100 billion.”

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His latest remarks come after Trump threatened to keep major U.S. oil company Exxon Mobil out of Venezuela after CEO Darren Woods also voiced caution on operations there, calling the country "uninvestable".

"I didn't like Exxon's response," Trump said at the time. "I'll probably be inclined to keep Exxon out. I didn't like their response. They're playing too cute."

The president has also been accused previously of plotting to steal Venezuela’s vast oil reserves “at gunpoint” after unveiling plans to control sales “indefinitely” for U.S. gain.

In early January the Department of Energy revealed a scheme to keep all proceeds from oil sales in U.S.-controlled accounts before the government decides how they are used “for the benefit of the American people and the Venezuelan people”.

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The largest of these accounts is reportedly located in Qatar.

Senior administration officials justified the decision to hold some of the proceeds in the Gulf state, rather than in U.S. banks, by pointing out that it is a neutral location from which the funds could be freely and safely moved without risk of seizure.

But critics, including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, hit out at the strategy.

“There is no basis in law for a president to set up an offshore account that he controls so that he can sell assets seized by the American military,” she said. “That is precisely a move that a corrupt politician would be attracted to.”