The CEO of a major oil company has said that it is “too expensive and too polluting” to return operations to Venezuela, despite the urging of Donald Trump.
TotalEnergies boss Patrick Pouyanne said the company had pulled out of the South American country “because it clashed with our strategy. It was too expensive and too polluting and that is still the case.”
The French multinational energy company left Venezuela in 2022 but, along with others, faced pressure to return from Trump following the U.S. military operations to capture the ousted president Nicolas Maduro on January 3.
Following the high-octane removal of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores from their home in Caracas, Trump said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela until the country was stable enough for democratic elections. He also urged U.S. energy firms to invest $100 billion to rebuild Venezuela’s oil industry, pledging to support them, and claiming that previous problems were “because they didn’t have Trump as a president.”