Congressional lawmakers from both parties are signaling that despite President Donald Trump’s assertion that he will control the money gained from selling Venezuelan oil turned over to the United States, they’ll want to check the books.
Democrats said they were appalled by the Trump administration’s plans to sell Venezuelan oil “indefinitely” and control the revenue, suggesting it would amount to a takeover of the country’s fledgling oil industry.
“It’s an insane plan,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told POLITICO coming out of a briefing Wednesday with Trump administration officials on Venezuela. “They are proposing to steal Venezuela’s oil at gunpoint forever and use that leverage to run the country.”
Republicans expressed tepid support for the plan, and though they projected confidence in Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s ability to manage the funds, they demanded some oversight over how the money would be spent.
“Chris Wright is brilliant when it comes to energy,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) after the briefing. “Nobody’s going to do a better job than him in terms of making sure that that oil is properly marketed. Congress will have an oversight role. He’ll [Wright] be up here testifying in front of us exactly how they’re doing it.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said the U.S. controlling oil revenues would provide important “leverage” over Venezuela’s government, given the fragile state of its economy.
“As long as we can control how they spend it, that could be a really important part of rebuilding the country and democracy in the region,” Cramer said after the briefing.
But he expressed some hesitation around selling the oil in the United States that would compete with crude produced in the United States. Both Cramer and Hoeven represent a state that is one of the largest oil producers in the United States but has recently seen its output plateau amid weak prices. The type of oil it produces wouldn’t compete directly with the lower-quality grades coming from Venezuela, but could be pushed out at the margins.
“As long as it’s not sold at a discount I probably don’t have a big problem with it. As long as they aren’t going to use that dirty, cheap oil to flood the market,” Cramer said.
Speaker Mike Johnson in an interview earlier Wednesday said he didn’t have the full details of the administration’s plans to secure oil fields and output in Venezuela, but he said he thought the plan “makes sense.”
And he said he did not expect the Trump administration would spend taxpayer dollars for the effort.
“I do not expect that they would,” he said.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
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