What does President Trump plan to do with Venezuela’s oil?
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and business correspondent Camila Domonoske.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for NPR, and the following message come from Yarl and Pamela Mone, thanking the people who make public radio great every day and also those who listen. |
| 0:10.3 | Hi, this is Creighton in Nagoya, Japan, where I have just made it to the top of a mountain for the first time in nine weeks after breaking my foot. |
| 0:18.6 | This podcast was recorded at 12.08 p.m. on Thursday, January 8th. |
| 0:25.4 | Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be hitting the trails. |
| 0:29.7 | Okay, enjoy the show. |
| 0:34.7 | Creighton's like up to everyone else who's climbed mountains. She's doing it with practically a broken foot. |
| 0:39.7 | Yes. Though I do have to say, how many mountains are there? How can we have so many mountains climbed? |
| 0:46.5 | We need more podcast episodes to cover all the mountains or get more mountains. |
| 0:50.9 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. |
| 0:55.2 | I'm Frank Orydonias. I also cover the White House. And NPR business correspondent Camila |
| 0:59.9 | Dominovsky is here. Hi, Camila. Hi, y'all. So today on the show, we are talking about |
| 1:05.6 | oil, specifically how President Trump plans to use Venezuelan oil and whether those plans can give him the |
| 1:12.5 | political boost he's hoping for. Let's start with the basics. President Trump put out a post on |
| 1:17.3 | social media earlier this week talking about keeping oil. What is he talking about and where is this |
| 1:26.1 | oil coming from? Yeah. |
| 1:32.9 | So the president referenced 30 to 50 million barrels of oil that he said would be controlled by the U.S., sold by the U.S. |
| 1:34.6 | And it's important to note that Venezuela, there's been a lot of talk about how oil production |
| 1:39.1 | there has collapsed, but the country is still making oil, right? A million barrels a day, a little less than that. |
| 1:47.2 | The state-owned oil company, Padevessa, is active. There are international oil companies. |
| 1:52.2 | Chevron is the only American one, but they are working in the country. And so the country has |
| 1:57.4 | been making this oil, but the oil has been under U.S. sanctions, which make it |
| 2:01.7 | more difficult to sell. And more recently, the U.S. has actually been blockading ships and |
... |
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