Venezuela's state-run petroleum company said Wednesday that it is in "negotiations" with the United States to sell Venezuelan oil to the U.S.
Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., or PDVSA, said in a statement that the talks were "for the sale of volumes of oil, within the framework of the commercial relations that exist between both countries."
Earlier in the day, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said he was working "directly in cooperation with the Venezuelans" in the wake of the Trump administration's capture of the country's deposed president, Nicolás Maduro.
PDVSA said the negotiation process "is being carried out under schemes similar to those in place with international companies, such as Chevron, and is based on a strictly commercial transaction, with criteria of legality, transparency, and benefit for both parties," according to an NBC News translation.
The statement was the first official acknowledgment from Venezuela's oil sector that it is engaging with U.S. representatives.
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday evening that “the Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America.”
“I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan, immediately,” he said on Truth Social.
In a statement Wednesday, the Energy Department said, "These oil sales begin immediately."
But PDVSA’s public comments suggest the sales are not a done deal, at least not yet.
Speaking at a conference in the Miami area Wednesday, Wright said, “We’re going to have that [oil] flowing again" from Venezuela.
"As we make progress with the [Venezuelan] government, you know, we'll enable the importing of parts and equipment and services to kind of prevent the industry from collapsing, stabilize the production and then, as quickly as possible, start to see it growing again," he added.
The Venezuelan oil industry and economy are under broad U.S. sanctions, which were recently expanded to include a full blockade of oil exports.
After Wright's comments Wednesday, a White House official told NBC News that the U.S. would "selectively" roll back some sanctions to enable the transport and sale of Venezuelan crude oil and related products on the global market.
"In the long run," Wright said, the Trump administration hopes to "create the conditions that the major American companies that were there before, maybe that weren't there before but want to be there, will go in."
U.S. oil giants Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips fully exited Venezuela in 2007, after the government nationalized energy infrastructure there. Chevron is the only U.S. firm currently operating in Venezuela, under a narrow license issued by the Trump administration.
Since the U.S. captured Maduro and Trump began sharing his hopes for the future of Venezuela's oil, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips have all been quiet about the prospect of expanding or re-entering Venezuela's oil industry.
Wright said that in the short to medium term, he sees Venezuelan oil production expanding by "several hundred thousand barrels a day" as a possibility. He did not specify precisely what that timeline might look like or what entity would execute the expansion.
Wright said market forces would determine whether Venezuela was a good investment for companies or not.
"We’re either going to make that happen, make those changes in Venezuela and the capital will flow, or if we can’t successfully make those changes in Venezuela, the capital won’t flow," he said at Goldman Sachs’ Energy, CleanTech & Utilities Conference in Miami.
"One of the first things I've been doing is talking to all the players that were in Venezuela, that are in Venezuela, that want to go into Venezuela," he said.
In those talks, Wright said, he is asking the companies, "What are the necessary conditions it would take you to put billions of dollars in to develop [oil] fields and build infrastructure?"
Wright did not say whether any oil companies had committed to re-enter the country or, in Chevron's case, to expand production.
Executives from Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Conoco will visit the White House on Friday for a meeting with Trump, an administration official told NBC News on Wednesday. Wright will also join the meeting.
"We're going to market the crude coming out of Venezuela," Wright said at the Goldman Sachs conference. Once the backlog is cleared, he said, the U.S. will "indefinitely ... sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace."
The U.S. will also supply the diluent that is required to render Venezuela's heavy, sour crude oil easier to move, he said.
Any oil sales, he added, would be "done by the U.S. government and deposited into accounts controlled by the U.S. government, and then from there those funds can flow back into Venezuela to benefit the Venezuelan people."
The price of WTI, or U.S. crude oil, fell around 2% Wednesday.
Because of what Trump calls a “blockade” of Venezuela’s oil industry, the country's onshore oil storage tanks are close to capacity.
Venezuela also has around 22 million barrels of oil sitting in ships offshore, according to data from Kpler that was reported by Bloomberg News.
