Venezuela’s political opposition has long overseen the U.S.-based oil company Citgo, but Venezuela’s interim government is reportedly ending that — further sidelining the opposition.
In 2019, the first Trump administration had Venezuela’s democratic opposition head the board that runs Citgo, an important subsidiary of Venezuela’s national oil company. The move was meant to help weaken Venezuela’s repressive socialist dictatorship.
Reuters reports that now — after the U.S. removed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro this year — acting President Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president, is ending that opposition oversight.
And according to Venezuela expert Imdat Oner, a senior fellow at the Gordon Institute for Public Policy at Florida International University, that Citgo shakeup has the current Trump administration’s approval.
“The bottom line is that the Trump administration will now own Citgo,” said Oner, who was a Turkish diplomat in Venezuela in the 2010s and has watched the Citgo chess game closely.
“So it has no Citgo role for the Venezuela opposition anymore, or for pushing any political transition in the next couple of years in favor of the opposition. It only needs the Delcy Rodríguez government as a tutelary administrator in Venezuela.”
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But for most Venezuelans — especially in the large South Florida diaspora — this is another sign President Trump is more interested in drilling Venezuela’s oil than in restoring its democracy.
In a video posted last week, opposition leader María Corina Machado criticized a deal Trump and Rodríguez made late last month to let the U.S. control much of Venezuela’s reserves.
“Our oil patrimony,” Machado said, “does not belong to Rodríguez’s illegitimate regime.”
