After decades of shady dealings with one of the world’s most egregious dictatorships, US oil companies are on the wrong side of history once again. This time, American leaders appear to be falling into line.

It was reported yesterday that the White House will allow oil and gas giant Chevron to restart operations in Venezuela, just months after Donald Trump revoked the company’s export license because of human rights concerns. Once the face of the “maximum pressure” campaign, the US President is now increasingly in favor of restoring diplomatic ties with Venezuela in exchange for cheap oil, an American stake, and deportation deals. Chevron, meanwhile, has spent millions lobbying for this outcome.

Chevron and other US energy corporations have been deeply embedded in Venezuela since the Cold War. Their partnerships and support for exploitative economic policies have contributed to entrenching inequality and political exclusion, fueling the revolutionary backlash which brought Hugo Chávez to power in 1999. In many ways, Big Oil helped build the very system it now seeks to finance.

Venezuela today possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves, with over 300 billion barrels according to a BP study, mostly concentrated in the Orinoco region — an area crowded with criminal groups and guerrillas. Chevron, in particular, has pursued an aggressive campaign to increase operations there, spending $6.67 million on lobbying the US government in 2024 alone.

This push has come without any kind of demands for democratic or human rights concessions, following Nicolás Maduro’s heavily disputed victory in last year’s presidential elections. While Chevron CEO Mike Wirth has said that the company is “apolitical in Venezuela and in other countries”, the fact remains that it now produces nearly a third of the Maduro regime’s annual oil income, directly funding a government accused of widespread torture, election fraud, and violent repression.

The oil lobby’s influence transcends party lines. During the Biden presidency, Washington granted licenses for Chevron to operate in joint ventures with PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-run oil company, citing energy market disruptions from the Ukraine war as the main reason. This appeared to be a case of swapping one tyrant’s dirty oil for another’s; environmental campaign group Global Witness described the move as a “persistent campaign” to prioritize oil over human rights.

Trump also made oil a cornerstone of his quiet pivot toward Caracas. Despite elevating hawks such as Marco Rubio and campaigning heavily with the anti-Maduro crowd in Florida, Trump reportedly softened his stance following pressure from oil executives in Louisiana and Texas, who urged him to “just move on” and get oil flowing.

Chevron gave over $8 million to the Republican Party and Trump’s 2024 campaign, according to the campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets. It was also the fourth-largest donor overall to Trump’s inauguration with a contribution of $2 million, part of a broader $75 million windfall from the fossil fuel industry to Trump-aligned PACs.

Having threatened in March to impose a 25% tariff on countries buying Venezuelan oil, two months later the Trump administration was reportedly in secret negotiations to allow Maduro to export more oil in exchange for accepting deportation flights. Trump views this as a way to obtain cheap oil, satisfy his donors, and continue the mass deportation campaign.

Even Venezuela’s US-backed opposition leaders have shown little resistance to Big Oil’s agenda. Presidential candidates Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, who ran in the last election, both expressed support for increased oil investment in Venezuela and met privately with US energy executives last year. This is an indictment of how big money regularly shapes US foreign policy, often behind the veil of strategic necessity or democratic values. The oil industry is no different, and big businesses have maximized profit on the backs of the Venezuelan people. Trump must ask himself an important question: does he really want Chevron and its shareholders deciding American foreign policy?

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Joseph Bouchard is a journalist and researcher covering security and geopolitics in Latin America. He is a PhD student in Politics at the University of Virginia.

GeopolWonk

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