Exxon CEO calls Venezuela 'uninvestable' without 'significant changes'

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post

January 9, 2026 at 6:00 p.m. EST


As President Donald Trump pushed U.S. oil companies to commit to invest $100 billion in Venezuela at a White House meeting on Friday, the CEO of ExxonMobil warned the company is far from enlisting.

CEO Darren Woods said that Venezuela is "uninvestable” after Trump asked him how long it would take the firm to restart operations there. He added that “significant changes have to be made to those commercial frameworks, the legal system, there has to be durable investment protections,” and there needs to be a rewrite of the laws governing oil production in Venezuela.

He would only commit to sending a technical team to the country shortly to begin assessing the situation. The exchange underscored how the industry is struggling to chart a course that will please the president without spending recklessly on risky drilling ventures.

The afternoon meeting was attended by several major oil companies in addition to Exxon, including Chevron, ConocoPhilips and Shell. Chevron is the only U.S. firm operational in Venezuela. Trump vowed the companies that commit to pumping in Venezuela will make substantial profits, but the firms, aware of the extremely challenging economics and security concerns around drilling in the unstable Latin American nation, are reticent to commit.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/01/09/trump-oil-executives-venezuela-exxon/

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No paywall (gift)

[off-the-clock]

1. Yep he will make an investable with our tax dollars

[C Moon]

5. Bet they raise middle class taxes.

[thought crime]

14. But they will just say it's tariff money that China paid us

[ManuelV]

31. That's Trumps backup plan 😆

[GreenWave]

2. So the imperialists didn't know all this a priori?

Trump thinks they can create miracles with the heavy crude from the Orinoco?

[OC375]

3. Proposition, Meet Premise

It's settled. We go into Venezuela to make it investible, and to protect those investments and ensure stability. Sounds noble, doesn't it?

[ManuelV]

32. With military backup

I am concerned that Trump could deploy U.S. troops or private military contractors, like Blackwater, to Venezuela to protect oil interests.

[Lovie777]

4. Read Venezuela has the dirtiest crude oil .....................

it will be expensive cleaning it up.

Plus, the WH don't have a plan for the country. Gangs are running rampart.

[thought crime]

17. If looting starts we'll know it's all over

[mathematic]

6. "It's about the oil" has always been the dumb thing Rubio told Trump to get him on board

Trump, like virtually everybody that stopped paying attention to history class after 7th grade, believes that mercantilism is 1) What capitalism is and 2) What strong countries do to stay strong. It's neither, of course. But Rubio et al have no problem using it to convince Trump to go along with whatever they're trying to cook up and now all those oil-exec libertarians are finding themselves in the awkward position of having to incinerate 10s of billions of dollars in Venezuela to appease Trump.

[reACTIONary]

12. It's neither, of course. And we have known it ....

... since 1776 - The publication date of The Wealth of Nations.

[thought crime]

16. Trump already wanted to invade Venezuela during his first term

Rex Tillerson talked him out of it. Rubio failed to do his job and keep Trump from doing illegal stuff.

[BadgerKid]

7. Hmm, how might T punish oil cos. that don't play ball?

No tax breaks? No pollution deregulation?

[bmichaelh]

8. Trump has no morality

Trump said his global power was limited only by his "morality"

One could replace "morality" with "narcissism"

Trump has no morality.

Question probably not asked at the news conference:
It is OK to spend 100 billion dollars for oil infrastructure in Venezuela but not on cancer and AIDS research.

[Bluetus]

9. With "easy" oil around $60/bbl, nobody needs that Venezuelan oil that is hard to refine

If WTI crude were more like $110, these companies might be more interested.

The best thing we can do is continue to move to hybrids and EVs, and fight all the wasteful AI data centers.

[jfz9580m]

18. "wasteful AI data centers."

What meagre scientific instincts or actually no..what scientific training I was fortunate enough to acquire taught me that this is not an elegant way to do science and doesn’t signal talent or training. It is brute force, trial and error, fishing..all scientists do that a little, but I would be shocked if that is at all about science.

It is just parasitic advertising and marketing I bet. That cannot possibly be good science.

[Bluetus]

19. They don't necessarily have a plan for AI. But they know money is flooding in for anything with an "AI" badge on it.

People are running around trying to build huge data centers everywhere they can. There are over 200 such projects in my state, in some stage of application. Most are being vigorously opposed, but some percentage will be built. And all the applications I have seen call for the local residents to eat a big part of the electrical cost. That is to say, the state is passing legislation that will compel the electric utilities to sell the electricity to these data centers way below their cost. It may be at the utility's marginal cost, but way below the cost of having to construct new generation capacity, so the individual rate-payers will get their rates jacked up. And the local residents get absolutely nothing out of it. There are no meaningful jobs, and the AI services can flow across the Internet to anywhere -- no local benefit.

[jfz9580m]

20. That is exactly the type of "growth"

I find most objectionable.

It defies common sense. And I cannot afford this anymore. Either one exerts one’s muscle as a citizen at the right time against oligarchs retroactively or gets permanently enslaved.

I have established contact with a journalist who I hope can help me do my part to safeguard my human and property rights which have been extortionately trampled on by industries like data mining and ai piling on to healthy growth.

I am a failed scientist at the very bottom of the barrel in science and we think differently from genuinely brilliant scientists ranging from Dr. Fauci to Alan Turing to my various mentors/doctors etc.

I can’t afford this and wait for a meaningless apology 500 years after I am dead from the sleazy PMC of that time (though really the sleazy PMC should be extinct by then) trying to work out what meaningless bumper sticker politics will appease or confuse the rabble, while in no way stopping this sort of inane growth machine that grows junk at the expense of quality.

There is no bigger pie or limitless growth. That defies the laws of physics. When you suck away resources from people with some natural, innate comprehension of limits (like my parents or me or my colleagues, mentors or doctors), with the help of trend and fad following morons, and hand them over to robber barons (Pichai, Musk, Zuck, Palantir) and algorithms with a side of extortion, what ends up happening is that what could have gone towards what would have worked out best for the planet and its people in even a moderate sense, instead goes to MixPanel/Lybrate/AcuBits/Cogito/Humanyze/Sprnklr/Pikini/Infobeans/YCombinator/anything Chamath Palihapitiya or Roger MacNamee/Anything Alex Pentland/Tata/Alibaba/Google/Affectiva/SmartEye/Reliance/Andreessen Horowitz/Microsoft/Cisco/Intel/Lockheed Martin/Vedanta etc or worse the NSO Group/Black Cube …
Or worst of all a bloated and creepy media/gaming/sports and entertainment complex with rubbish like Pokemon Go, that tries to corrupt or buy up medical research and to militarize psychiatry while calling it prison reform. And such parasites attack Harm Reduction and push coercive psychiatry predatorily since a female complainant without hard facts can easily be smeared as a TI or borderline. VR for mental health, emotion ai, fall monitoring , ai for border security a la the creepy Aaron Elkins, lie detection..these are execrable, parasitic industries.

This whole damn post reads like an ad for a series of small creepy companies when it is a diss. These creepy and parasitic industries and these moronic memes etc have no concept of negative attention which Rick Rude Calves Legs got it dammit. Why isn’t creepy a bad look anymore..oh right..except for Beyonce/Taylor Swift/Kim Kardashian, women no longer have a say..

These systems stress decent doctors and decent frontline medical professionals to the hilt and won’t pay nurses well nor lower the strain on doctors, but adorn them with phrases like “heroes and warriors” and most insultingly offer a hospital potato..
They strip women of rights and then say liberation is posting about your periods on Lucy Guo’s apps and selling soaps.
Damn absurdtopia which must never be mined by Chuck Lorre or for that matter Larry David for a one note, 200 season sitcom with one bloody joke spun out for 500 years.
Disgraceful..
The problem with Larry David etc is that when you strip the everyman’s absurdist plight of social commentary (such as pointing out that Sundar Pichai should be in prison not claiming to bts be for building the OS that was to the president in Idiocracy).

It is why only putting criminal misconduct and malpractice allegations on the table against all these creeps and their flunkies and participants in this disgraceful rot is all rabble like me can do and try to turn into a reality with enough info to target allegations so no wrong accusations hobble a very serious complaint that is about the basic right to not have harassment labeled gaming or kayfabe.
I was listening to a creep riding a bike on my street. If i have some patience with obliviously annoying human behaviors, I have none with participation in this or having contributed to these brain rotting chaos.
This is an insult to human intelligence..

I am not trolling..It is just..I am planning to file serious complaints and push back without amelioration or dilution because what I have seen as a one off is a power play by the private sector and its deeply fascistic and misogynistic.
The pandemic taught me that our media is too corrupt to not add to poor Dr Fauci’s problems by amplifying stories like Lab Leak and Beaglegate when the average private sector abuse of ai and data and factory farming get barely addressed.
So to stay ahead of these assholes and their shills you have to think on your feet all the time about what is durable and why. Not what is ephemeral.
White collar crime must not destroy democracy.
Lina Khan was a step in the right direction. I don’t mind Yan Lecun as ai scientists go. But the rest of these guys -especially Pichai etc need a real lesson.
I am not a politician or media personality, but I have just enough by way of resources for myself and can no longer afford this or the shape shifting sleazy narrative. Some common rules must be established.
I have to go complete some work. My job is not posting online. It involves math, physics and real work not this criminal rot.
So I put a criminal case formally locally on the table where it must be filed. If I am wrong, I will back down.

And only a total rube would be impressed by theta waves, optogenetics, magnetoreception, sensors etc into lacking the common sense to demand to know who, what and why this worthless trash is sucking away my home and time with spurious medical or solar scam products. I am a Green and a scientist and I don’t buy anything that works this fucking sleazily. It looks unscientific social and geo engineering and needs strict public sector regulation. This isn’t the damn Welcome Party’s stronghold and I am filing a case in India to drive this out and press charges.

I am tired of waiting, which is why I contacted a trustworthy journalist. I told the journalist I post here.
If I am wrong I will back down, but I am not a conspiracist or gullible. I trusted experts of the old kind not this type you have in Ca who ignore regulations..That is not Green Energy.
Unless someone like Peter Kalmus verified something..it is no longer scientists like Fauci, Madhav Gadgil, Peter Kalmus, Francis Collins etc.

I would not trust the Trump or RFK sycophants nor the private sector nor sycophants of any of our local leaders and their sleazy, scammers.

I need to see and then maybe, but more likely not. I trust experts not the sycophants of kings. My home is not owned by the marketplace and is not a corrupt government’s playground.
Adani and Ambani have zero voice and it is rank misogyny to play bot or not games or shill lousy products..
Whatever it is, unless it is like Gadgil or Fauci or Collins..not a knock off..


I can’y possibly cover everything I disapprove of and ranked proportionately all fair and balanced..that is too many things.,
I have to go offline to work instead of endlessly listing everything I hate hoping to cover everything.

Oh..sorry bluetus..I swear I am not crazy..

This has to end. I hate being annoyed in my home and any data should go to someone like Yan Lecun and not a sleazy knockoff..
It isn’t what is said and trumpeted about. This should not exist at all. It should be ended.

My dad was an actual military officer and whatever he watches on tv, irl he is canny enough to see through corrupt defense contractors etc. Don’t use my house or street. I sm taking this to court wherever it was both real and objectionable and I find most things objectionable. They won’t get away with this by making me sound frazzled. I have to go do sctual real work and tune this out since I found a journalist.

I am escalating this conflict irl in as many ways as I can. But this pointless froth that results in more clicks and attention is a waste of life.
I already communicated that conflict is …inevitable. Now I will go work in peace and initiate conflict.

[Bluetus]

27. I wish you success in your pursuit. It is the nature of fascism ...

that the forces you mention (namely, government, media, and soulless corporations -- you didn't specifically mention Big Religion, but they are in there too) align themselves into an impenetrable force. We are already there. History tells us that there is no gentle way out.

I do take some difference with:

There is no bigger pie or limitless growth. That defies the laws of physics. When you suck away resources from people with some natural, innate comprehension of limits (like my parents or me or my colleagues, mentors or doctors), with the help of trend and fad following morons, and hand them over to robber barons (Pichai, Musk, Zuck, Palantir) and algorithms with a side of extortion, what ends up happening is that what could have gone towards what would have worked out best for the planet and its people in even a moderate sense, instead goes to MixPanel/Lybrate/AcuBits/Cogito/Humanyze/Sprnklr/Pikini/Infobeans/YCombinator/anything Chamath Palihapitiya or Roger MacNamee/Anything Alex Pentland/Tata/Alibaba/Google/Affectiva/SmartEye/Reliance/Andreessen Horowitz/Microsoft/Cisco/Intel/Lockheed Martin/Vedanta etc or worse the NSO Group/Black Cube …

Ultimately, they are all about the same things, money and power. And their main interest in power is to get more money. So ultimately, it is all about money. And we have to understand, there are multiple ways to oppress and steal from the masses. One way is to simply kill some and imprison the rest, either literally in prisons or by taking away their money and forcing them to be economic slaves, just to continue eating and breathing. There are many horrific examples throughout history.

Another way is much more insidious, because you can actually make people imprison themselves. And that begins by placing control of the money itself in the hands of the few, such as you mentioned above. In the old way of thinking, we had the Federal Reserve, which was a few banksters who controlled the money supply. Naturally, they acted in the interests of their fellow banksters because in their view, if banksters are not rich, then everything else falls apart. There were some restraints over this activity because for a long time, the Fed's creation of money was (theoretically) limited to a multiplier of the amount of gold in Ft. Knox.

That went away 70 years ago. Since that time, the available money has been totally the product of fiat. That has created the situation where the powerful can simply create new money for themselves, gradually shifting the balance of wealth from the masses to the few through inflation. During these same ~70 years, we had lots of new forms of money, beyond currency, in circulation. We added credit cards with usury interest. Bigger and bigger mortgages. 6-year car loans. Student loan debt that can't be forgiven in bankruptcy, and so on. Then in 2008, the central banks suddenly created $20 trillion in new money. It did not go to working people around the world. It went almost entirely to the banksters and the already rich.

That money was supposed to be temporary, but it was never pulled back, and THAT is essentially what has funded the insanely valued Mag-7 companies (and others) that have made the people you mentioned rich beyond any prior imagination.

Even that was not enough for them. In the last 15 years, they have created about $5 trillion in crypto, which is being used by the rich like any other currency. And it is this post-2008 explosion of money supply (roughly $25 trillion created out of thin air) that is now flooding into the system as construction of AI data centers

[Bluetus]

29. Here is an interesting discussion

[lonely bird]

30. Infinite growth...

“Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” - Kenneth Boulding

[fujiyamasan]

24. Good point

Really limited upside here from their perspective.

But Trump is a guy that bankrupted casinos. Brilliant businessman and all.

[Marcuse]

10. "I moved on her like a ...."

[Upthevibe]

11. BumRushDaShow..........

Thanks for the post.

I read the article. Wow! He concocted this scheme without even talking to them?!

I hope they finally realize what a frickin' moron he is! How in the world do all of these "masters of industry" not know what an idiot he is and him being a "business man" is an absolute joke!

[thought crime]

13. Sounds like a No

[creon]

15. yes

For now it is a no.
Trump will have to do something to sweeten the pot.

[DallasNE]

21. Ready, Fire, Aim

Issues like this should have been hammered out ahead of time to lower the risk.

Also, where is the plan for reconstruction? Maybe, borrow what Bush used in Iraq, which was a series of Clear, Hold, Build statements. Didn't learn much from that fiasco, I see.

[J_William_Ryan]

22. Trump's illegal military action and lawless kidnapping of Maduro was both criminal and pointless.

Given the price of oil, the poor quality of Venezuelan oil, and Venezuela’s ruined oil infrastructure, oil companies have little interest in Trump’s petroleum heist.

[BradBo]

23. I freaking knew it!!!!!!!

Oil companies ain’t gettin’ near Venezuela.
Their not gonna put their workforce in danger of attacks. They don’t need to.

[mymomwasright]

25. "Durable investment protection" includes an Iraq type 1:1 troop-contractor ratio

EOM

[bucolic_frolic]

26. Political uncertainty.

Foreign investments in Russia at this point are valued at zero. That could happen in Venezuela too. No guarantee lobbying for laws will work, no guarantee assets won't get nationalized. The oil is said to be thick and expensive to refine. Is it all to establish a beachhead to takeover all of South America? Trump's Folly in my view.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

28. No sane company would invest in Venezuela

Link to tweet