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Wright on MSNBC: The U.S. Will Sell Venezuela's Oil and Control the Regime's Cash Flow

January 9, 2026 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:06:23

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What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright joined MSNBC on January 9, 2026, according to the Department of Energy’s recording, ahead of White House meetings with oil company executives on Venezuela. Wright said there are no specific deals with the U.S. government, but that many companies have operated in Venezuela for decades and some for over a century, and will reach commercial arrangements there. He said the U.S. role is to reduce corruption, criminality, drug running, human trafficking and terrorist harboring in a country he said has collapsed over 25 years from a wealthy, prosperous U.S. ally.

Wright confirmed the arrangement involves the government currently in place in Caracas. He said the United States will control the cash flow of the regime: Venezuelan oil, embargoed and sanctioned for years though he said the sanctions were not enforced, will resume selling under U.S. enforcement, and the money will be delivered back as long as the government lives by basic rules to reduce criminality and drug and money running and improve conditions for Venezuelans, as he described the framework. He said that structure motivates Caracas to grow production with foreign capital, and that industry interest in returning is tremendous.

On sequencing, Wright said the first increases will come from companies already operating in Venezuela once sanctions are lifted or licenses issued, and that companies that left employ over a thousand Venezuelans abroad whose first reaction, he said, is that they want to go home. Asked about security guarantees or U.S. military personnel to protect oil workers, he said there are no plans at all for that, while keeping options open, and noted Chevron has operated in Venezuela for over a hundred years with thousands of local employees. On prices, he acknowledged new Venezuelan supply puts downward pressure on oil prices, said President Trump’s agenda is lower prices for American consumers even if that makes business tougher for producers, and noted the President’s hope of about $50 a barrel raised by the host.

Why it matters

Wright’s description of controlling Caracas’s oil cash flow is the operating manual for the Venezuela intervention’s economic side: oil sales as leverage, licenses as the sequencing tool, and no U.S. security guarantee for the companies being asked to invest.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins MSNBC — January 9, 2026”, 2026-01-09 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-01-09). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.