Global Witness has criticized the US attack on Venezuela in what the Trump administration says will enable US companies to exploit the country’s vast fossil fuel reserves.
The investigative campaigning organization called for a peaceful and democratic solution that allows the people of Venezuela to decide the future of their country and its resources.
After the United States launched an attack on the Latin American country and kidnapped Maduro, President Trump said: “We’re going to go in with very large American oil companies — the largest anywhere in the world — and spend billions of dollars, fix the severely broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country. We’re going to have a presence in Venezuela in terms of oil… We’re going to take a tremendous amount of wealth off the ground,” Trump said.
Mike Davis, CEO of Global Witness, said:
“Trump’s attack on Venezuela reminds us that a world dependent on fossil fuels is a world full of conflict, instability, and human rights violations.
“Most of the world’s uses of oil and gas are controlled by regimes that are undemocratic and systematically violate human rights. We know that these qualities breed instability, but the global addiction to fossil fuels entrenches that harmful power and condemns us all to the effects of more conflict.
“Switching to renewables is great for the climate but it is also a form of liberation, because it frees us all from dependence on tyrants and warmongers.
“At the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Brazil, 80 countries pledged to develop national plans to phase out their use of fossil fuels. The events of the past two days in Venezuela underscore the urgency of the need to end dependence on oil and gas, and not just the plans, but also the actions needed to end dependence on oil and gas.”
The history of oil and power
After Venezuela nationalized its oil industry 1976There was tension between its government, the United States, and foreign oil companies operating in the country.
in Late 1990s and The first decade of the twenty-first centuryVenezuela has introduced policies aimed at increasing state revenues from the oil industry to support social programs, including placing the oil industry under the control of a state-owned company.
In 2007, the president was Hugo Chavez He made a decree It requires converting foreign-owned oil operations to 60 percent ownership under the country’s state-owned oil company.
Foreign companies that resisted these changes – including ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil – had their assets confiscated. Both we Companies Chevron spent years in legal battles to obtain compensation in the wake of the seizures.
After Trump’s attack last week He said The seizures were “the largest property theft in our country’s history” and that “the massive oil infrastructure was taken over like we were children, and we didn’t do anything about it.”
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