Venezuelan Oil Will Be Used to Refill US Reserve, Trump Says
(Bloomberg) -- The US plans to use its newfound assertion of control over billions of barrels of Venezuelan crude oil to refill the nation’s depleted emergency reserve, President Donald Trump said Sunday.
“One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil is fill up the Strategic National Reserves,” Trump said in a Truth Social post, in which be blamed Joe Biden, his predecessor as president, for emptying the reserve.
“The ‘topping out’ process will begin very shortly, and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States,” Trump said.
The more than 700 million-barrel US reserve currently holds 289.7 million barrels of oil, or roughly 40% of its capacity, following massive drawdowns by both Trump and Biden.
Trump said Friday that the US was taking control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven reserves in partnership with private businesses, a move that US officials said would create the world’s second-largest private oil company by reserves and secure American petroleum supplies for decades to come.
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