US oil giant ExxonMobil says Venezuela is 'uninvestable' | Hacker News Reader

US oil giant ExxonMobil says Venezuela is 'uninvestable'

ft.com

60 pointspetethomas53 comments

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> When pressed by Trump, Woods said Exxon would send a technical team to Venezuela within weeks to assess conditions. He also said he was “confident” that the changes needed for investment “can be put in place”.

Regardless of weather it's true or not, they have a huge interest in saying so.

What's really crazy (even by today's US standards) is how Trump and his clique speak as if he annexed Venezuela and he can do whatever he wants.

It was discussed 100 times here already, but the damage to the myth of US as the 'good guy' that is immense. I personally see the US now, as the same that say China or Russia and have no intention of going there again, unless absolutely necessary. If you told me that some years ago, I would think you're crazy.

> the damage to the myth of US as the 'good guy' that is immense.

People don't live under a rock. The US is an empire and has acted like it for at least 80 years if not more. The fantasy that the US is part of the good guys depends on how much you believe the propaganda.

I grew up in Eastern Europe. For 90% of people there at the time, US = paradise. Maybe it was propaganda, I don't know. Later in life I got travel a lot and meet a lot of Americans and for most, their moral and ethics are at the exact opposite of what the US is showing now.

It doesn't have to be a paradise in absolute terms to be a significantly better place. EE to the US was definitely an improvement for a very long time. Even if many other places already didn't see the US as good guys.

Most Eastern European people I know have long associated the US with calamities such as the bombing of civilians in Belgrade.

In the former Yugoslavia maybe. But in the former USSR and Warsaw Pact countries, that isn’t even remotely true. The US was critical in supporting anti-USSR resistance, either directly with money or symbolically (“Tear down this wall”)

The image of the good guy USA had (at least in eastern Europe) has less to do with how they treated other countries and more with how they treated their own citizens.

Exactly it has more to do with which end of the stick you're on.

On the other hand, treating your citizens decently isn't that low of a bar. There are quite a few states out there where you can't have even that.

its relative. The US was far preferable to the Soviet Union. Its now far preferable to its major global rival, China.

Yeah I believe you can make relative comparisons between the different empires around. A world dominated by Russia would probably be much worse

I don’t understand why this has been downvoted, it’s true that the US has done many interventions in the past based on vague rationale or simply by misleading public opinion. And it has always been a part of its’ state propaganda to make it look like they are on the good side, doesn’t mean they are though every time. The difference this time is that they didn’t even try that much to shape a proper narrative.

The US has been annexing land almost since its foundation. Ask the original Native Americans. Or the people of Hawaii. Or Puerto Rico.

The US USP was essentially just its success as a consumer economy, with relative prosperity compared to Rest of World and nice things to buy.

And there used to be nominal free speech. You could criticise the government, and nothing would happen unless you became organised enough to start threatening capital, in which case you might well be murdered.

That's the good news. The bad news is that non-whites in the US have always had a much worse time of it, and the veneer of freedom has always been very thin for them.

Now the US has stopped pretending to be a creative economy and has decided not to hide its addiction to violent extraction.

So we'll see how that works out for everyone.

I'd guess it works out to be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" — are you sure you're the other Hobbes?

Consider how that will restrain the diplomatic and geopolitical options available to future US presidents, particularly those of the other party and it starts to seem quite strategic if not a major win for isolationism and Trump’s Monroe 2.0 agenda.

Of course their interest is to completely destroy all socialistic tendencies there, that's why Trump assured them to run the country from now on. They already invested in robbing their oil twice there, and where thrown out twice. Incredible stories, Chevron even had to change it's name then to get rid of the foul mouth press.

If Trump won't offer something better than military in Venezuela, then those socialist tendencies in Venezuela are not going to disappear.

Large states (including the US) have been intervening in nearby countries since the beginning of time. Even for Latin America, this is a "typical" intervention for the US: Cuba, Panama, Grenada, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Haiti, Guatemala, on and on, all happened in the 20th century.

What's different this time is the total lack of effort (or ability to?) to construct a narrative justifying it.

20th century means that we’re talking at least 2.5 decades ago. That’s a long time. And for the most part, US foreign policy regarded much of those actions as folly even if they will never say that publicly.

You’re absolutely right with your assessment but beyond that this is also a rolling back of the clock to thinking from decades ago.

When the Soviets were literally standing 60km from Vienna with tank brigades a lot of bullshit was easier to swallow.

Right now it seems like totally unnecessary destabilization. Don’t even get me started on proposing to seizing NATO territory by force in Greenland.

Yes, but that was because there was a golden age when the west dominated the world without facing serious rivals. There was less need for interventions and the west was deluded (by wishful thinking) into regarding this as a permanent shift.

Even in the last 25 years the US has fought in Afghanistan, bombed Libya, ISIL held territory, Syria, blockaded Yemen and probably more.

The world today is going back to a cold war like rivalry between the US and China so we can expect both sides to use much the same tactics.

So Latin America has to expect an Operation Condor 2.0, that implemented state terrorism across all of Latin America?

Yep, but folks love their veneer. The morals of the American people and that of the state department / industrial complex aren't the same.

Oddly in this case the US government seemed to do something that many Venezuelan expats support. We'll see if it helps the lives of regular Venezuelans at all.

Also a number of sci-fi from the last decade or two predicted or imagined the US in a war in Venezuela in the 2030's. It makes more sense to view it not for oil but more to keep Chinese and Russian influence out of the US's "backyard". Apparently both had been getting close to Maduro.

We also have to recognize that these particular narratives actually created some objectively positive accomplishments as well. That's what made the postwar US different than the postwar USSR. We can plainly see the results in some pretty well set up experiments (eg East Germany vs West Germany). It's very easy to criticize the failings of liberal American values and liberties looking from a vantage point where we get to take those values and liberties for granted.

... but now it seems as if people got bored of those lofty narratives, and the US can't even prevent its own domestic jihadis from overrunning the country with backwards fundamentalism. So now we're staring down their equivalent of Sharia law while they rally around regime-sponsored murderers ramping up sectarian violence.

The last US backed coup in latin America was Bolivia 2019

Is there any evidence this is the case?

> What's really crazy (even by today's US standards) is how Trump and his clique speak as if he annexed Venezuela and he can do whatever he wants.

Setting aside what this does to the image of the US, this also just isn't grounded in reality. The US conducted a singular operation with a narrowly defined goal of extracting their president and his wife. They then declared that they were putting the Venuzuellan vice president in charge. I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but that looks a lot more like them getting behind a winner instead of dictating it.

Sure, the military operation was a tactical success; and will probably make Venuzuella more subservient in the near term. But I see no evidence we have done anything close to annexing them.

The US is literally dictating that certain things must happen as they prefer in Venezuela, or else. Venezuela has no agency as a sovereign nation as long as this is the case, ie. they've been annexed.

Annexation usually refers to the US officially claiming legal and territorial sovereignty over another country.

I think the terms client state or satellite state more accurately reflect the situation. Hope that helps!

Not "client" as that sounds as though Venezuela asked the US to help them with something. I guess "satellite" works, and even so I'd still say they were annexed into that status.

No, it's simple.

If you get a passport in "annexed" Venezuela, it would be a US passport. It would be a US territory similar to Puerto Rico which is part of the US.

Passport is just an example but a good barometer. This implies in the federation of international states, Venezuala is an "independent" party, put recognized. Puerto Rico then by comparison has no such independence, this is all handled by the Federal government.

It's also fair to say that this is nothing new. US has a long history of messing about with the affairs of central and south american states. Which - fairly - has lead to the US paying the price by said states collapsing and then having the US absorbing tens of millions of individuals claiming asylum

The US is acting like Russia for sure, but China's modus operandi isn't really like that. China is much more interested in a rules-based world order than either country and will gladly fill the soft power vacuum the US is leaving

> Trump and his clique speak as if he annexed Venezuela and he can do whatever he wants.

He did and can though. Venezuela is now a US colony, with its resources available to whomever is ready to invest. Heck, that's exactly what the article is saying.

It's 2026 not 1956. Heavy crude oil is not a worthwhile investment for the future. This whole thing hasn't been thought through, it's based on retro vibes.

Existing US refineries are designed for heavy. Retooling everything for other types of oil is incredibly expensive and will not likely occur.

> Existing US refineries are designed for heavy

I'm aware of that. Nevertheless, this is not a growth industry, and expecting riches from it in 10 years time or more is thinking mired in past. It's not serious.

More serious commentary on that:

https://www.politico.eu/article/the-problem-with-donald-trum...

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/08/climate/china-venezuela-o...

https://electrek.co/2026/01/03/electric-vehicles-will-end-oi...

>serious commentary >electrek >politico >cnn

I think that you misread. "more serious" than my comment. And much more so than your comment.

That seems like wishful thinking.

Take the graphs of solar energy, wind energy etc being deployed worldwide. Project them out 10+ years. In light of that, betting on growth in the fossil oil industry after that timeframe is what seems wishful to me. If not plain deluded: It's not serious, it's just nostalgia and vibes. It's living in the past.

I can take graphs of the oil industry and project them out the same way. It may be the oil industry falls off eventually, but it won't be in our lifetimes.

>“Our giant oil companies will be spending at least $100bn of their money — not the government’s money,” he said.

He still hasn't got over that Mexico-will-pay-for-our-wall thing has he?

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