ETTD 🛢️

Crazy — @MrGlobal2025 pointed out oil companies won’t jump at the chance to spend $100 BILLION to rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure.

Trump’s solution? WE PAY FOR IT FOR THEM. 🤔

The corruption is endless.
They are looting the treasury. https://t.co/aSru5qya4T pic.twitter.com/OHNv15i7fu

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) January 6, 2026

That might not even work:

While it may have known there was oil in those waters all along, ExxonMobil didn’t officially announce its find until 2015, after Shell had left the partnership. Within a few years it was already shipping its first barrel and announcing that Guyana would soon be its most productive oil field in the world, outpacing even its Texas stronghold in the Permian basin. Chevron bought into the project in 2024 via its acquisition of Hess Corporation, a development Exxon fought fiercely but ultimately had to accept when an International Chamber of Commerce arbitration panel ruled in Chevron’s favor in July 2025. The project has faced a variety of lawsuits, protests, and criticisms, but the firm backing of the Guyanese government has enabled it to grow exponentially over the past decade. The one obstacle Exxon had not been able to shake was Maduro, who was growing increasingly obstinate in his claims that Guyana’s oil was actually Venezuela’s.

When Maduro first began yelling about how Essequibo, the Guyanese state that is home to the country’s lucrative oil deposits, is actually Venezuelan territory, few took it seriously. Venezuela had been making this claim off and on since 1962 after all, even occupying and setting up a military base and airfield on a small island in the region since 1966. Maduro’s announcements seemed like just the latest in a long line of brash moves made by a president losing his grip on power and watching his country’s top economic engine—the oil industry—sputter. After decades of drilling, Venezuela’s oil production is on the decline; plus the industry there produces the crudest type of oil, on par with Canadian tar sands oil, which can’t grab the top price that Guyana’s light, sweet crude can earn. And with sanctions on Venezuela’s oil and foreign powers increasingly disinterested in the country’s industry, infrastructure has been poorly maintained.

There’s also an argument to be made that the claim Venezuela has the largest reserves in the world is mostly hype; from Venezuela (specifically, Chavez and Maduro).

10. So the upshot is that Trump is trying to take control of an asset that is (a) likely overvalued (b) very expensive to process (c) is inside an economic basket case of a country (d) produces a commodity in a world with low prices and flat / falling demand.

And the oil companies are making out better next door.

This is all sounding very Trumpian indeed.