Trump's 'Rebuild Venezuela': Oil Executive Edition
President Donald Trump is reportedly meeting with 17 energy executives to discuss 'rebuilding Venezuela’s battered oil sector.' Battered, one might recall, largely due to successive US sanctions campaigns, particularly under Trump's own administration, explicitly aimed at undermining the Maduro government (Source: US Treasury Department, 2019 sanctions on PDVSA). It's a striking coincidence that
the 'rebuilding' effort requires the same companies who stand to profit immensely from privatized oil resources. This isn't 'rebuilding' Venezuela; it's a classic case of breaking a country and then offering to fix it – for a fee, of course – with the same hands that broke it. One wonders if Venezuelan input was sought, or if 'rebuilding' simply means ensuring US companies get first dibs on the
world's largest proven oil reserves. The military industrial complex profits from war, and a suffering state's resources draw in the energy industrial complex just as powerfully.