Trump gasses up US-Venezuela oil revenue, but ‘hundreds of billions’ is too high

President Donald Trump says oil revenues are flowing to the U.S. and Venezuela since the U.S. arrested then-leader Nicolás Maduro in January and brought him to New York City for trial on drug and corruption charges.

During an Aug. 4 Fox News interview, Trump said voters in the midterm elections “want to see winning,” and he offered Venezuela as an example. “People were so opposed to what I did in Venezuela,” he said. “It lasted one day. And now, they, look, we’re making hundreds of billions of dollars, and so are they.”

But Trump’s figure is higher than other available data. The best estimates show $13 billion in Venezuelan oil revenue since Maduro’s ouster, and it’s unclear how much of that went to the United States and how much to Venezuela. 

When PolitiFact asked the White House for data to support Trump’s figure, the press office referred us back to his comments.

“The hundreds of billions figure is not remotely credible,” said Phil Gunson, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit that studies deadly conflicts. Gunson is based in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. 

Trump’s estimate exceeds the entire gross domestic product of Venezuela several times over. 

What is the U.S. role in Venezuela’s oil market?

After Maduro’s arrest, Delcy Rodríguez, vice president at the time, took over as interim president; the U.S. recognized her as head of state in March. The Trump administration said it would control Venezuela’s oil industry, which has a lot of reserves but has struggled over the last decade to secure the capital investment needed to bring that oil to market.

An executive order issued days after Maduro’s ouster said oil revenue would be the Venezuelan government property but held in U.S. government accounts in a “custodial and governmental capacity.” The U.S. Energy Department said the funds would be “disbursed for the benefit of the American people and the Venezuelan people.”

Neither government has produced a single, easy-to-locate and up-to-date dollar amount of how much oil revenue has been generated, nor who has received the money. So fact-checking Trump relies on piecing together scattered estimates of revenues and expenditures. 

A July 22 Financial Times analysis estimated that the U.S. has collected about $13 billion in Venezuelan oil revenue. The Financial Times looked at data on crude oil shipments from Venezuela since January compiled by the freight data platform Kpler, combined with price estimates for several grades of Venezuelan crude oil supplied by Argus Media, a pricing agency.

Trump was skeptical of the $13 billion figure for oil revenue when a reporter referenced the estimate on Air Force One in July, saying “I think (it’s) even more than that.” 

For Trump’s claim of “hundreds of billions of dollars” to be right, both the U.S. and Venezuela would each have to be receiving more than Venezuela’s current gross domestic product — the sum of all economic activity within the country of nearly 29 million people. 

Venezuela’s GDP is about $111 billion, according to the International Monetary Fund. The Financial Times estimated that oil revenues account for about a quarter of Venezuela’s GDP.

Analysts told PolitiFact they were unaware of oil revenue estimates that reached into the hundreds of billions for either country.

“Even with the most generous assumption you’d never get there,” said Dany Bahar, a Brown University visiting fellow in international and public affairs.

And questions persist about how much of the oil revenue is going to Venezuela.

The State Department told Congress in April it had spent $3 billion for operating costs, such as oil industry supplies and government worker salaries. A Venezuelan government site that tracks revenue for U.S.-sold oil shows $300 million in revenue sent to Venezuela through March. (The U.S. has also sent Venezuela $386 million for disaster relief after two major earthquakes on June 24.) 

David Smilde, a senior associate at Tulane University’s Center for Inter-American Policy Research, described Trump’s Aug. 4 figure as “not possible” and said the most recent credible amount he’s seen is the Financial Times’ $13 billion.

Gunson said it’s unclear “where all that money went, how much was sent to Venezuela and what it was spent on.” He said transparency was not a priority in Venezuela even before Maduro’s ouster; the country has not published a national budget in more than a decade.

Smilde said there is “incredible opaqueness with which Venezuela’s oil sales are being routed.”

“My sense is that there has been quite a bit of revenue returning to Venezuela, but given the government’s budget deficit and all of the need, it does not have the impact people expect,” Smilde said. 

Our ruling

Trump said that in Venezuela, “We’re making hundreds of billions of dollars (in oil revenue), and so are they.”

Experts and published analyses place the highest credible figure for oil revenue at $13 billion since the U.S. took over Venezuela’s oil industry. 

Hundreds of billions of dollars for each of the U.S. and Venezuela would be several times the smaller country’s reported gross domestic product.

We rate the statement False.

Senior Audience Engagement Producer Ellen Hine contributed to this report.