There is a big role for oil com­pa­nies in Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s evolv­ing strat­e­gy for Venezuela. These big oil com­pa­nies are go­ing to in­vest in the in­dus­try, bring it up to speed af­ter years of de­te­ri­o­ra­tion un­der US eco­nom­ic sanc­tions, and strength­en the Venezue­lan oil econ­o­my, bring­ing ben­e­fits to cit­i­zens of Venezuela, gen­er­at­ing com­pa­ny prof­its and sup­ply­ing the world with oil, ac­cord­ing to the US Pres­i­dent.

Chi­na will con­tin­ue to re­ceive its sup­ply of Venezue­lan oil—that has been agreed.

The re­al ques­tions are: how will se­cu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty be guar­an­teed, how is that oil wealth go­ing to be used to re­lieve the eco­nom­ic stress of the Venezue­lan peo­ple and how will the mass of the pop­u­la­tion ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit in a sus­tain­able fash­ion.

It needs to be ac­knowl­edged that the oil wealth of Venezuela has nev­er re­al­ly been spread across the hu­man land­scape by any Venezue­lan leader. The Perez Jimenez regime be­fore Hugo Chavez was steeped in cor­rup­tion. Chavez did in­tro­duce a so­cial­ist di­men­sion to eco­nom­ic and so­cial pol­i­cy that ben­e­fit­ed more of the poor who had been left out to live on the fringe. But he was an au­thor­i­tar­i­an leader who built a mil­i­tary oli­garchy to sur­vive.

Nicolás Maduro be­came an au­thor­i­tar­i­an dic­ta­tor who plun­dered the pub­lic purse and made deals with the most ne­far­i­ous crim­i­nal el­e­ments in the hemi­sphere, and lever­aged the geopo­lit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ties of Venezue­lan oil and nat­ur­al gas abun­dance to sur­vive and to pro­voke the US. In or­der to suc­ceed, the widen­ing mil­i­tary oli­garchy sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ex­pand­ed and deep­ened its ca­pac­i­ty to plun­der un­der the larg­er um­brel­la of the Maduro elite of friends and fam­i­ly.

That hav­ing been said, peace­ful tran­si­tion in a coun­try like Venezuela is not eas­i­ly se­cured. This, in part, ex­plains the al­liance with Del­cy Ro­dríguez and her broth­er Jorge, who must have played a role in col­lab­o­ra­tion with se­lect mil­i­tary lead­ers in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the han­dover of Maduro.

Pres­i­dent Trump’s pro­nounce­ments seem to mean that he will es­tab­lish a gov­ern­ing en­ti­ty that can se­cure and sta­b­lise Venezuela, and re­struc­ture its main source of wealth, which is oil. Right now, the US gov­ern­ment is work­ing with Ro­dríguez, Maduro’s vice pres­i­dent, who has suc­ceed­ed Maduro con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly.

So, le­git­i­ma­cy is be­ing giv­en for a time to Maduro’s vice pres­i­dent, while le­git­i­ma­cy was nev­er con­ced­ed to Maduro him­self! But ... re­al­i­ties have to be man­aged. And Pres­i­dent Trump is seek­ing to man­age. It is dif­fi­cult to say if any­thing re­sem­bling democ­ra­cy is on his hori­zon. It is al­so at this time un­clear whether an even­tu­al trans­fer to the Op­po­si­tion team which beat Maduro in the 2024 elec­tion will ac­tu­al­ly take place.

What is al­so a source of some dis­so­nance is that since the an­nounce­ment of Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do as win­ner of the No­bel Peace Prize, cul­mi­nat­ing in a BBC in­ter­view af­ter the ac­tu­al award, Macha­do was be­ing po­si­tioned glob­al­ly as the Venezue­lan leader in wait­ing; but in her own let­ter af­ter Maduro’s fall, she named Ed­mun­do Gon­za­les Ur­ru­tia as the le­git­i­mate pres­i­dent of Venezuela and called for his in­stal­la­tion as pres­i­dent and com­man­der in chief of Venezuela’s armed forces.

Gon­za­les Ur­ru­tia led the Op­po­si­tion in the 2024 elec­tion, af­ter Macha­do was dis­qual­i­fied as a can­di­date and Macha­do’s let­ter pre­ced­ed Trump’s com­ments on her fit­ness for the job.

Through­out this en­tire mil­i­tary build-up by the US around Venezuela and the con­fronta­tion be­tween Pres­i­dent Trump and now de­posed Pres­i­dent Maduro, and now in this ten­u­ous pe­ri­od af­ter the fall of Maduro, Gon­za­les Ur­ru­tia has been ex­treme­ly qui­et and al­most in­vis­i­ble. But Gon­za­les Ur­ru­tia did at­tend Pres­i­dent Trump’s Jan­u­ary 20, 2025 in­au­gu­ra­tion as a spe­cial guest of Re­pub­li­can Sen­a­tor Rick Scott, who de­scribed him as Venezuela’s “right­ful pres­i­dent” and pres­i­dent-elect of Venezuela.

Rick Scott and Mar­co Ru­bio, a sen­a­to­r­i­al col­league be­fore his ap­point­ment as Sec­re­tary of State, have had a long, mu­tu­al­ly sup­port­ive re­la­tion­ship. For his con­fir­ma­tion by the Sen­ate as Sec­re­tary of State for the US, Ru­bio was glow­ing­ly in­tro­duced and sup­port­ed by Scott.

If Gon­za­les Ur­ru­tia is to be in­stalled as the le­git­i­mate pres­i­dent of Venezuela, the ques­tion is when and un­der what lev­el of sta­bil­i­ty in a coun­try in which a cor­rupt mil­i­tary, which col­lab­o­rat­ed in­tense­ly with Maduro, would be fear­ful of a back­lash af­ter Maduro’s fall, and where po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned loy­al­ist mili­tia groups are spread through­out the coun­try, but es­pe­cial­ly in the city of Cara­cas

Hence, Trump’s cau­tion and con­cern about ef­fec­tive prepa­ra­tion for the tran­si­tion can be un­der­stood in this con­text. It is al­so pos­si­ble that US strate­gists may be an­tic­i­pat­ing con­flicts among un­easy fac­tions of the in­her­it­ing, dic­ta­tor­ship elite and wait­ing to de­ter­mine next steps.