Item 1 of 2 Crude oil drips from a valve at an oil well operated by Venezuela’s state oil company in Monagas April 16, 2015. Picture taken on April 16, 2015. REUTERS\/Carlos Garcia Rawlins\/File Photo<\/p>\n
[1\/2]Crude oil drips from a valve at an oil well operated by Venezuela’s state oil company in Monagas April 16, 2015. Picture taken on April 16, 2015. REUTERS\/Carlos Garcia Rawlins\/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab<\/a><\/p>\n Jan 10 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at blocking courts or creditors from impounding revenue tied to the sale of Venezuelan oil held in U.S. Treasury accounts, the White House said on Saturday.<\/p>\n The emergency order said the revenue, held in foreign government deposit funds, should be used in Venezuela<\/a> to help create “peace, prosperity and stability.” The order was signed on Friday, less than a week after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in Caracas.<\/p>\n Sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n Several companies have longstanding claims against the country. Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), opens new tab<\/a> and ConocoPhillips (COP.N), opens new tab<\/a>, for example, left Venezuela nearly 20 years ago after their assets were nationalized.<\/a> Both are still owed billions of dollars.<\/p>\n ConocoPhillips is the largest non-sovereign credit holder in Venezuela, its CEO Ryan Lance told U.S. President Donald Trump during a White House meeting on Friday, adding that the U.S. government has an opportunity to restore what has been lost.<\/p>\n Trump said ConocoPhillips will get a lot of its money back, but the U.S. would start with a clean slate. “We’re not going to look at what people lost in the past because that was their fault,” Trump said before asking Lance how much ConocoPhillips lost in Venezuela.<\/p>\n Lance said his company was owed $12 billion.<\/p>\n “Well, good write-off,” Trump remarked.<\/p>\n Saturday’s order does not mention any specific company. It declares that the money is the sovereign property of Venezuela held in U.S. custody for governmental and diplomatic purposes and is not subject to private claims.<\/p>\n “President Trump is preventing the seizure of Venezuelan oil revenue that could undermine critical U.S. efforts to ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela,” the White House said in a fact sheet.<\/p>\n A U.S. agreement with Venezuela’s interim leaders would provide up to 50 million barrels of crude oil to the U.S., where numerous refineries are specially equipped to refine it.<\/p>\n Trump cited the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the 1976 National Emergencies Act as a legal justification.<\/p>\n Trump signed the order the same day he met in Washington<\/a> with executives from Exxon, Conoco, Chevron (CVX.N), opens new tab<\/a> and other oil companies as part of a bid to encourage them to invest $100 billion in Venezuela’s oil industry.<\/p>\n Reporting by Ernest Scheyder in Houston, Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto and Shariq Khan in New York; editing by Rod Nickel, Sergio Non, Liz Hampton and Diane Craft<\/p>\n Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab<\/a><\/p>\n Purchase Licensing Rights<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n Ernest Scheyder is a senior correspondent covering critical minerals and the global energy transition, as well as the author of “The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power our Lives,” which was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award and was named the American Energy Society\u2019s Energy Book of the Year. He previously wrote about the U.S. shale revolution \u2013 drawing on a two-year stint based in oil-rich North Dakota \u2013 as well as politics and the environment. A native of Maine, Scheyder is a graduate of the University of Maine \u2013 where he was named a distinguished alumnus in 2021 \u2013 and Columbia Journalism School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Item 1 of 2 Crude oil drips from a valve at an oil well operated by Venezuela’s state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,182548,182530,10529,184973,183103,195106,183105,185356,183096,183093,184987,183092,184707,41240,184328,184975,1872,184992,5198,184976,192347,195102,195098,182531,100804,6655,137922,184366,182549,3,183076,195099,184978,183102,195105,185355,183089,184991,193870,183097,183077,37215,183078,195103,195104,192341,195101,183090,184704,189858,184433,184972,184971,21,19,22,20,25,24,195100,29921,183085],"class_list":["post-404573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-amers","tag-cmpny","tag-com","tag-cru","tag-destlita","tag-destoenr","tag-destogov","tag-destolit","tag-destopub","tag-destousdnm","tag-destousnrg","tag-destoustpm","tag-dip","tag-eco","tag-emrg","tag-ener","tag-energy","tag-enff","tag-eng","tag-enr","tag-expro","tag-expro1","tag-gasu","tag-gen","tag-latam","tag-legal","tag-mce","tag-mtpix","tag-namer","tag-news","tag-news1","tag-ngasd","tag-nrg","tag-nrlinogov","tag-nrlpaoenr","tag-nrlpaolit","tag-nrlpaopub","tag-oilg","tag-oili","tag-packageus-top-news","tag-pol","tag-potus","tag-publ","tag-refi","tag-refi1","tag-repiexploration-production","tag-repirefining","tag-reuters-legal","tag-rulestrump","tag-rulesvenezuela","tag-samer","tag-topicenergy-oil-gas","tag-topicmarkets-commodities-energy","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-util","tag-ve","tag-wash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}