President Donald Trump on Friday tried to sell Big Oil executives on the promise of an expansive new drilling campaign in Venezuela.
But at least for now, the industry isn’t buying it.
Trump and his top aides emerged from a lengthy White House meeting without any major commitments from companies to invest billions of dollars in the nation, after running into deep skepticism over the administration’s plan for ensuring Venezuela’s long-term stability.
“It’s uninvestible,” ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods told officials in a blunt evaluation of the obstacles to doing business in the nation. “There are a number of legal and commercial frameworks that would have to be established to even understand what kind of returns we would get on the investment.”
Several other executives at the meeting expressed similar reluctance, warning that the industry would first need to secure extensive security and financial guarantees before beginning a yearslong effort to ramp up oil production.
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