alt Hacker NewsFrom your source: "Venezuela, for the American oil companies, will be a field day," Florida Republican congresswoman María Elvira Salazar said in a recent interview on Fox Business. "American companies can go in and fix all the oil pipes, the whole oil rigs and everything that has to do with... oil and the derivatives." Trump might seem open to such arguments. He campaigned on the slogan "drill, baby, drill" and has generally called for expanding oil production, which he has tied to lower prices for Americans. /quote
It then goes on to note that output could be more than doubled in two years. That alone would put them as the 11th largest oil producer and the third largest in the Americas. The decade timeline and budget was for creating maximalist infrastructure for fully exploiting the resources.
The strongest proof that the article has that trump isn’t interested in oil is his word that he isn’t interested in oil. How much faith do you put in Trump’s honesty?
The 2023 Trump quote is "We would have taken over it, we would have kept all that oil". But I think war-for-oil explanations are too pat, generally. Just because he shamelessly says the oil is a motivation doesn't mean it makes sense as a motivation.