Trump says Venezuela took away oil rights from the U.S. and wants them back

Washington - U.S. President Donald Trump stated this Wednesday that Venezuela took away the oil rights from American companies and said he wants them back. "Remember that they took away all our energy rights. They took away all our oil not so long ago. We want it back. They took it from us illegally," declared the president to the press from Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington.

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"We want it back. They took away our oil rights, even though there's a lot of oil there, as you know, they kicked out our companies, and we want it back," he insisted. These statements come a day after Trump announced that he has ordered a total blockade on the entry and exit of Venezuela to oil tankers sanctioned by the US government. The leader intensified pressure on Venezuela, a country dependent on the oil business, after seizing a ship last week that had left the South American country and confiscating the crude oil it was transporting. The Venezuelan oil industry was nationalized on January 1, 1976, during the first presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez, and reserved the rights to exploration and exploitation of the country's deposits to the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa). In 2007, then-President Hugo Chávez modified the rules on the oil industry to force transnationals to become minority partners of Pdvsa or withdraw from the country. Despite the tension between Washington and Caracas, the American company Chevron operates in Venezuela in association with Pdvsa thanks to a license from the Treasury Department that exempts it from the sanctions imposed on Venezuelan crude. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Wednesday that the United States created Venezuela's oil industry and called its nationalization "the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property."

Until now, the Trump Administration claimed that its pressure strategy on Venezuela sought to combat drug trafficking, as it accuses Nicolás Maduro's government of leading the Cartel of the Suns.

The U.S. Armed Forces have destroyed about twenty vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific since September that were allegedly carrying drugs, extrajudicially killing at least 95 crew members. Trump has promised to launch attacks against drug trafficking in Venezuelan territory "soon", while Maduro has urged his citizens to join citizen militias to defend the country.