Energy Secretary Chris Wright told POLITICO he will soon travel to Venezuela to meet its leaders and discuss the future of its state-run oil company — but he insisted that the Trump administration’s interests in the resource-rich nation don’t revolve around oil.
In an exclusive interview for the POLITICO Energy podcast, Wright said that deposing former leader Nicolás Maduro was “not a move for more oil supply,” and that the country’s world-leading crude reserves were never a “meaningful part of the decision-making.”
“This was a geopolitical problem of a country that was a threat to all of its neighbors, a threat to the Western hemisphere, and a massive exporter of guns, of drugs, of criminals,” Wright said. “It may be a nice coincidence, but it is coincidental that Venezuela’s main product and giant resource is oil.”
In the weeks since the U.S. military raid that captured Maduro, President Donald Trump has repeatedly declared that the U.S. would rebuild Venezuela’s oil sector to the benefit of American consumers. “One of the things the United States gets out of this will be even lower energy prices,” Trump told oil executives at the White House last month — despite public skepticism from executives such as Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods that the still-unstable country is a viable place to invest.
Wright’s comments come as the Trump administration is facing new questions about Venezuela’s future direction. The White House is seeking to increase the country’s oil production and nudge it toward democracy, but is also working with former members of Maduro’s government to prevent an economic and political crisis from spiraling out of control.
Wright’s upcoming visit will make him the most senior Trump administration official to set foot in Venezuela since Maduro’s capture. He plans to meet with acting President Delcy Rodríguez during his time there, he said.
There has been “no change to the plan” to bring about a transition to democracy in Venezuela, Wright said, and he expects the country to hold democratic elections in the next 18 to 24 months. He said, however, that the effort will require working with the interim authorities and leaning on economic levers, like the oil sector.
“As you’ve seen in other countries, this is a challenge and you don’t snap your fingers and it happens overnight,” he said. “But as fast as we can make that happen, the better.”
The White House on Friday pushed back after opposition leader María Corina Machado told POLITICO elections would happen within the year. One White House adviser, granted anonymity to discuss the situation, said Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, was “working against U.S. national security goals.”
Wright said his top priority in his upcoming visit will be to “connect directly face-to-face with the humans,” including people in the Rodríguez administration and leadership of the oil and gas industry. High on his agenda, he said, is improving the management of the state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, which has emerged as an obstacle in the Trump administration’s efforts to push international oil companies to invest in the country.
Wright said he plans to “start the dialogue” with Venezuelan officials on the future leadership of PdVSA, but noted it is ultimately a “Venezuelan company.”
He also hopes to travel to some of the nation’s oil fields, which hold some of the largest reserves in the world but have suffered from lack of investment under the socialist regime that has eroded their output to a fraction of the levels seen three decades ago.
“PdVSA was a highly professional, technically competent oil and gas company 30 years ago, and it hasn’t been one for quite some time,” Wright said.
Under the country’s strict oil regulations, international companies are required to partner on developments with PdVSA, which has faced criticisms of corruption and mismanagement.
The secretary praised Venezuela’s interim authorities for quickly passing changes to its oil law that allow foreign oil companies to maintain more control over their operations and cash flow in the country.
“The legislation that was passed quite rapidly, I think you can see as a gesture of improvement already very early on in this new relationship between the U.S. and Venezuela,” Wright said. “They want to see investment coming into Venezuela as much as we want to see investment coming into Venezuela.”
Wright acknowledged, however, that major producers will need further changes to feel confident in investing, including establishing ownership rights over their assets and the ability to resolve disputes in a neutral court. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the new revisions don’t go “far enough.”
Not everyone in the U.S. has welcomed the bid to revive Venezuelan oil production. Some U.S. oil and gas producers andGOP lawmakers in Congress have grumbled about the administration’s Venezuela push, arguing the White House should not be working to add supply when American companies are already struggling with low crude prices — a complaint that Wright dismissed as a feature of “the beauty of capitalism.”
“At that time of maybe already some stress in the American oil and gas industry, does this add a little more stress to the oil and gas industry? I’m sure it does,” he said. “But new supply, new competition always adds stress to industries. And that’s what drives innovation and progress in America.”
Wright has taken a leading role in the administration’s efforts to convince voters it is addressing rising costs of energy ahead of the midterm elections. He also put distance between the administration and the oil and gas industry, which contributed tens of millions of dollars to Trump’s presidential campaign.
“People often say to me, ‘You’re there to help the oil and gas companies, Trump is gonna help the oil and gas companies.’ Quite the opposite,” said Wright, who led oilfield services company Liberty Energy before joining the administration.
Wright said Trump’s goal is to drive up oil and gas production, a policy he said would keep prices low and fuel economic growth. That’s a stark contrast, he said, from President Joe Biden’s pledge during the 2020 campaign that he would work to make a long-term transition away from fossil fuels.
That contributed to higher crude prices and lifted oil company profits to record levels under Biden, Wright said.
“Oil and gas companies, my business — absolute record profitability under President Biden,” he said. “That kind of a policy, that is maybe a winner for 1 percent of Americans that work in oil and gas and coal production, but it’s a loser for the other 99 percent of Americans that consume oil and gas and coal and don’t benefit from higher prices.”
U.S. oil and gas production extended their years-long growth during the Biden administration to reach record levels, a trend that has continued under Trump. But prices for oil and gasoline surged during Biden’s term after the global supply shocks to energy markets caused by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and surging energy demand as economic activity bounced back from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Wright said Trump’s focus on lowering gas prices “makes business conditions tougher for oil and gas companies.”
“But guess what? They get up, they innovate, they drive improvement,” he said. The administration’s moves to lower royalty rates for drilling on federal land, reduce regulation and open new areas up for drilling will all enable companies to sell oil and gas at lower prices.
The secretary also touted his efforts to boost nuclear power, saying that an Energy Department initiative to bring three next-generation small modular reactors to criticality by July 4 remains on track.
Despite what he acknowledged would be a high upfront cost, Wright called nuclear the “most meaningful addition” to the U.S. energy system because of its reliability and ability to power intensive industrial processes.
“If you run the math, nuclear can become a cheap source of energy,” he said. “It will not be next year or five years from now, but straight math says it can.”
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