{"id":12142,"date":"2026-01-04T18:54:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T18:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lemonde.express\/venezuelas-oil-is-at-the-heart-of-trumps-ambitions\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T18:54:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T18:54:07","slug":"venezuelas-oil-is-at-the-heart-of-trumps-ambitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lemonde.express\/en\/venezuelas-oil-is-at-the-heart-of-trumps-ambitions\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela&#8217;s oil is at the heart of Trump&#8217;s ambitions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<figure class=\"article__media\"> <picture class=\"article__media\">  <\/picture> <noscript>  <\/noscript><figcaption class=\"article__legend\" aria-hidden=\"true\">The El Palito refinery, owned by Venezuela&#8217;s national oil company PDVSA, one of the largest in the country, in Puerto Cabello, on December 21, 2025.  <span class=\"article__credit\" aria-hidden=\"true\">JESUS VARGAS\/PICTURE-ALLIANCE\/DPA\/AP<\/span>  <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"article__paragraph  \">For months, US officials justified pressure on Venezuela by calling it a war on drug trafficking. Now, a different priority has emerged: access to oil in the Latin American nation, which sits atop the world&#8217;s largest crude reserves. Soon after the ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lemonde.fr\/en\/international\/article\/2026\/01\/03\/us-captures-venezuelan-president-maduro-trump-says_6749033_5.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">abducted during a raid by US special forces<\/a> at dawn on&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lemonde.fr\/en\/economy\/article\/2026\/01\/04\/venezuela-s-oil-is-at-the-heart-of-trump-s-ambitions_6749067_19.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The El Palito refinery, owned by Venezuela&#8217;s national oil company PDVSA, one of the largest in the country, in Puerto Cabello, on&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3446],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lemonde.express\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lemonde.express\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lemonde.express\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lemonde.express\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lemonde.express\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lemonde.express\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lemonde.express\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lemonde.express\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lemonde.express\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}