'THEY'RE PLAYING TOO CUTE': Trump hits back at oil giant over Venezuela remarks

President Trump declaring a national emergency to guard Venezuelan oil revenue from any lawsuits or creditors. And after meeting with energy executives at the White House, the administration is hoping to get

oil giants to invest $100 billion to help rebuild Venezuela's infrastructure. But the reception might not be as warm as Trump had hoped. Exxon is calling the country quote uninvestable, uninvestable.

But the White House says they'll come around.

We had Chevron, Shell, Repsol, E&I, four of the biggest oil companies in the world saying we will immediately start ramping up our investments and growing our production. I've got a crew of American wildcatters that said we'll go down this week and start checking things out. We're ready to go.

Probably be inclined to keep Exxon out. I didn't like their response where they're playing too cute.

And the president is working to put pressure on another Latin American communist stronghold, Cuba, cutting off all oil and money going into the country. I want to hit both those points, Lou and Jackie. I know with your oil expertise, I want your thoughts as well. Exxon Mobil, we can talk about oil companies going into Venezuela.

Let's talk about that first and then let's get to maybe the indirect way of getting to

Cuba.

Yeah. Can anyone blame them for being reluctant? I mean, Exxon and Conoco especially, they lost billions of dollars the last two times that they were involved with Venezuelan oil exploration. I think the key thing you have to remember here,

these companies are spending about $15 to $20 billion a year on their own for domestic and international production. What the president's asking them to do is invest that much or more in Venezuela.

So this is not like-

Yeah, but you get revenue, you get profits.

You might get revenue, you might get profits. Here's the key though. The Venezuelan oil is not an easy oil to refine. We are talking about our refiners being able to handle this heavy, sour, crude. It's geared towards Canadian heavy sands oil, right? I

Venezuelan. Venezuelan is It has a high sulfur cont like pavement. Yeah, it's but you have to gear the that they're processing a a day of Canadian heavy o

heavy sour. It's not the differences. So it's not I think this is key. No g gonna get the money. We'v before. So it's not an easy switch. So I think this is key. No guarantee that you're gonna get the money. We've lost money here before. So why wouldn't you be reluctant as a super major to put more money to work?

You've got to secure that I'm gonna get a return on my investment. And ironically at 55, $60 a barrel, you're not getting a good return on your investment.

But Jackie, there's a difference between guaranteed a return and being reluctant and hesitant versus saying uninvestable, right?

Where do you come down on those? Yes. I think uninvestable is very, very extreme to the point that you're making. I hear you on the refinery challenges. That's probably one of our biggest challenges here at home anyway is that we don't even have enough refining capacity to handle our own oil, let alone trying to refine a different

level and capacity of crude, if you want to call it that. So I think that's an issue, but that doesn't mean that these aren't challenges that can be overcome and that this oil isn't worth something. It's worth a lot. You know, Brian, you've brought up this idea that it's on the global stage.

The reason oil prices didn't really significantly spike because of this is because we're very well supplied here at home in the United States and through other avenues as well. But money is money and oil is oil. And I just think that if you were a company being skeptical about this, I understand that. But if you were going to thumb your nose up at the prospect

while your competitors were going there to do work there, you'll be last in the game.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think, absolutely, totally agree with you. In the long term, there's a valid reason to be there. In the short term, it's just not as compelling. So I think long term, the president's doing the right thing.

He's taking the steps to compel

and incentivize these companies to invest. is what happens with this transition and how long does it take? Because if the Democrats win the White House in the next election, then if you're an energy company and all of a sudden you went to set up shop in Venezuela, you could have a serious problem.

Yeah, you get a reverse card in UNO on that.

So.

You know, three years isn't that far off.

No.

It's not. Not in $100 billion investment world. It's pretty lickety split. Brian, wanted to come to you on this because we've been talking about sort of the geopolitical issues in the region. And this was never just about Venezuelan oil. This was about who's in bed with Venezuela, Iran, China, Russia.

It's a big bed.

And then we've had a very big bed. Our little neighbor Cuba over there, who's dependent on Venezuela oil. And if we start to cut them off, do we use oil as a way to help promote democracy? And we've talked about pro-democracy protests on the ground in other regions of the world. How do you think about that?

Well, I do think that's how the president's thinking about it. Cuba gave Venezuela intelligence services, which failed abysmally when we took Maduro. Venezuela gives Cuba oil. President says, we're not gonna do that anymore. I don't think you have to go for democracy in Cuba,

but I do think you can show the world you're serious about bad actors when you use oil as a way to punish those who are bad actors. I don't blame Exxon for not wanting to go into Venezuela. I think Exxon's negotiating here. They've got a lot of leverage.

Anybody with leverage is gonna negotiate. They're saying if we go back, imagine you get dumped twice by a girlfriend and both times she steals all your stuff after she dumps you.

Is this a personal anecdote or is this just an anecdote?

No, totally hypothetical.

What's that saying?

Fool me once, shame on you.

So Exxon's been fooled a couple times. So that's fine, because how many people were around that table? There were like, what, there were like 20 people around that table?

There was a lot of guys there who are not at Exxon's level, but who are hungry and they may want to take a risk. Can I ask a question though? Yes. What happens in the situation with Cuba? Because I saw a chart this morning that I wasn't necessarily expecting to be the case, which is that some of the oil that Cuba gets is from Venezuela, but some of it is from Russia and some of it is from Mexico. What if Russia ups the ante to supply them in the wake of this?

Can I just get in there because I covered the region for 12 years. I was in Cuba shortly after the Soviet Union died. And that was a crisis, because overnight, they lost 60% of their GDP. That's how much the old Soviet Union was giving them in terms of oil.

And a lot of the oil that they were given wasn't just for domestic use. They would sell it on the open market. So it was essentially a gift from the Soviet Union because for the Soviet Union, it was a great listening base for the United States. Of course, at one point it was also a place for their missiles.

That ended with a Cuban missile crisis. But when I was there, and it was about 93 or so, when they really were suffering terribly. Had it not been for the presence of Fidel Castro, who died about 15 years after that, the country probably, the Communist Party probably would have lost at that point. That's how bad it got. Castro was very clever.

What he did was he opened up the country to private enterprise, and it began to take off like wildfire. The Cubans, all you have to do is go to Miami and see how good Cubans are at entrepreneurship. They're brilliant at it and they still have the fervor. It's not unlike Iran. You and I, Jackie, have talked about this before.

The Iranians are very good at starting businesses as well. It was happening in Cuba, but because Fidel allowed just enough private enterprise to take off to keep the economy going, to keep the economy alive, the Communist Party survived and they continued to hold on to power. Fidel is long gone. The current leader is a jerk. He's kind of like Maduro in Venezuela. The people are ready for a change. I think course, it's not only Nicaragua. It's not only Cuba.

It's also Nicaragua. And there are a couple of other socialist countries that rely on Venezuelan oil. So it could be a cascading effect that we would see where the entire Western Hemisphere, after Argentina. Brazil is a big exception. But basically, all of the Western Hemisphere could be devoted to capitalism, except New

York City. Which is the irony of irony.

I'm fleeing to Venezuela to flee communism in New York City. Okay, so let's talk about the Western Hemisphere, Lou. A lot of people, we've, about two weeks ago in the Maduro news, relearned our history lessons with the Monroe Doctrine and calling it the Donro Doctrine and calling it the Don Rowe Doctrine and basically saying if it's in our backyard, it is our moral imperative to just watch our backs, right?

And if that means capitalism, so be it. The Western Hemisphere is ours. China stay out of it.

Does that work?

Do you buy that?

I do buy it because if not America, then who? Someone else is going to do it. Then China, then Russia. If the president sits and is just still and doesn't do anything, everyone else, our adversaries, are very active. So I think you need to do that.

I think you're seeing it reshuffle and make every foreign adversary reconsider what their plans might be. China, what are you thinking about Taiwan necessarily? We saw over this weekend, we thought maybe there was going to be an invasion in Iran to help usher that in. I mean, there was rumors of that as well. Stay tuned. Yeah, stay tuned.

Agreed. Preparations are being made. So I think the Dunro doctrine absolutely is necessary. I don't want to boil this whole invasion to get Maduro down to oil like everyone wants to. I think there's a propensity to simplify and say it's always about one thing. It was about oil, or was it about rare earths,

or was it about diplomacy and national security? How about all of the above? I mean, we talked about this last week. I think the president is, for the first time for a US president in a long time,

thinking like the Chinese in decades and centuries, not just in midterms and presidential elections. And the key is, who would you rather have get involved in Venezuelan oil? The United States, which is because of the fact that we share the same hemisphere with Venezuela, we're a short plane trip away from Venezuela. Would you rather have the Chinese go halfway around the world and control Venezuelan oil or us? Would you rather have the Chinese go halfway around the world and control Venezuelan oil or us? It is a them or us situation.