ExxonMobil has warned that Venezuela remains “uninvestable” without “significant changes” in a rebuke to Donald Trump’s call for oil companies to pour billions of dollars into revitalising its oil industry.
Darren Woods, chief executive of the biggest US oil major, struck a sceptical tone at a televised White House gathering of energy bosses on Friday — even as some other companies expressed optimism about the potential to tap the world’s biggest oil reserves.
“If we look at the legal and commercial constructs, frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable,” Woods told Trump in a meeting that included many of America’s most prominent energy executives and some of the president’s top lieutenants.