December 18, 2025 | 09:37 am
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President of the United States (US), Donald Trump, defended his government's naval blockade on Venezuela on Wednesday. He argued that the measure was necessary to protect America's interests and prevent illegal activities in the region.
"We're not gonna let anybody going through that shouldn't be going through. They took all of our energy rights—they took all of our oil from not that long ago ... they illegally took it," said Trump to reporters, as reported by Anadolu.
The statement came a day after he announced a "total and complete blockade" on all oil tanker vessels subject to sanctions entering or leaving Venezuela. He also referred to President Nicolas Maduro's government as a "foreign terrorist organization."
Trump described the action as a response to what he referred to as the illegal seizure of America's energy assets, reiterating long-standing complaints about the Venezuelan oil sector.
"Getting land, oil rights, whatever we had. They took it away because we had a president that maybe wasn’t watching. But they’re not going to do that. We want it back. They took our oil rights. We had a lot of oil there. As you know, they threw our companies out, and we want it back," he said.
Supported by Aides
Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, also declared separately that Venezuelan oil belongs to Washington. As reported by Al Jazeera, he described the nationalization of the South American country's oil industry as "theft."
Miller's comments on Wednesday raised further questions about the Trump administration's claim that drug smuggling is the main source of tension with Venezuela.
"American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela," wrote Miller, who serves as White House deputy chief of staff, in a social media post.
"Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs."
Although US and British companies were involved in early oil exploration in Venezuela, the fuel still belongs to the Latin American country based on the international law principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources.
Venezuela nationalized its oil sector in 1976 and placed it under the control of the state-run company PDVSA.
Then, in 2007, the late leftist President Hugo Chavez nationalized remaining foreign oil projects in Venezuela, effectively displacing US oil giants such as ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil.
US companies filed legal claims to challenge the expropriation process, and in 2014, a World Bank arbitration tribunal ordered Venezuela to pay ExxonMobil $1.6 billion. Legal proceedings are still ongoing.
The US imposed sanctions on PDVSA in 2019, during Trump's first presidency.
Read: Venezuela's Maduro Rejects "Slave's Peace" with the US as Trump Ramps up Pressure
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