Venezuela didn't steal U.S. oil. Here's what happened
The Indicator from Planet Money
NPR
4.7 • 9.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
President Trump claims Venezuela stole American oil. Is that true? We trace Venezuela's oil industry from its 1920s birth through nationalization and then collapse. Today on the show, how did the Venezuelan oil industry get to a point where it’s barely pulling from its reserves? And will anything change now?
Related episodes:
Venezuela’s economic descent (Updated)
Venezuela’s recent economic history (Update)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | NPR. |
| 0:02.0 | When President Donald Trump explained the Nikolas Maduro seizure at his press conference, he mentioned one word a lot. |
| 0:19.6 | We're going to take back the oil? |
| 0:20.9 | Yeah, there was a lot of oil talk. |
| 0:22.9 | As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust for a long |
| 0:28.1 | period of time. |
| 0:29.0 | He said that U.S. companies were going to take what he claimed was American oil. |
| 0:34.1 | You know, they stole our oil. |
| 0:36.2 | We built that whole industry there. |
| 0:39.5 | On Tuesday, the president announced next steps. He posted on Truth Social that Venezuela would |
| 0:44.6 | turn over between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S. |
| 0:49.2 | Meanwhile, American oil companies have been either silent or very measured in their comments. |
| 0:54.9 | A spokesperson for Texas Energy Company ConocoPhillips told the Associated Press |
| 0:59.0 | it would be premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments. |
| 1:04.8 | So how likely is a Venezuelan oil renaissance? |
| 1:09.2 | This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darien Woods. |
| 1:12.2 | And I'm Waylon Wong. Today on the show, the sticky history of Venezuelan oil that got us here. |
| 1:17.8 | Socialism, sanctions, and sour crude. We explain it all after the break. |
| 1:24.6 | Over the weekend, President Trump said that Venezuela had made the greatest theft in the history of America. |
| 1:30.5 | He said, they took our oil away from us. |
| 1:33.6 | So what really happened? |
| 1:35.6 | Francisco Manaldi is the director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University. |
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