{"id":17368,"date":"2026-01-07T19:01:51","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T19:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/congress-wants-oversight-of-venezuelan-oil-revenues\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T19:01:51","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T19:01:51","slug":"congress-wants-oversight-of-venezuelan-oil-revenues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/congress-wants-oversight-of-venezuelan-oil-revenues\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress wants oversight of Venezuelan oil revenues"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Congressional lawmakers from both parties are signaling that despite President Donald Trump’s assertion that he will control the money gained from selling Venezuelan oil turned over to the United States, they\u2019ll want to check the books.<\/p>\n

Democrats said they were appalled by the Trump administration\u2019s plans to sell Venezuelan oil \u201cindefinitely\u201d and control the revenue, suggesting it would amount to a takeover of the country\u2019s fledgling oil industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an insane plan,\u201d Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told Blue Light News coming out of a briefing Wednesday with Trump administration officials on Venezuela. \u201cThey are proposing to steal Venezuela’s oil at gunpoint forever and use that leverage to run the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans expressed tepid support for the plan, and though they projected confidence in Energy Secretary Chris Wright\u2019s ability to manage the funds, they demanded some oversight over how the money would be spent.<\/p>\n

\u201cChris Wright is brilliant when it comes to energy,\u201d said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) after the briefing. \u201cNobody’s going to do a better job than him in terms of making sure that that oil is properly marketed. Congress will have an oversight role. He’ll [Wright] be up here testifying in front of us exactly how they’re doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said the U.S. controlling oil revenues would provide important \u201cleverage\u201d over Venezuela\u2019s government, given the fragile state of its economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as we can control how they spend it, that could be a really important part of rebuilding the country and democracy in the region,\u201d Cramer said after the briefing.<\/p>\n

But he expressed some hesitation around selling the oil in the United States that would compete with crude produced in the United States. Both Cramer and Hoeven represent a state that is one of the largest oil producers in the United States but has recently seen its output plateau amid weak prices. The type of oil it produces wouldn\u2019t compete directly with the lower-quality grades coming from Venezuela, but could be pushed out at the margins.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as it’s not sold at a discount I probably don’t have a big problem with it. As long as they aren’t going to use that dirty, cheap oil to flood the market,\u201d Cramer said.<\/p>\n

Speaker Mike Johnson in an interview earlier Wednesday said he didn\u2019t have the full details of the administration’s plans to secure oil fields and output in Venezuela, but he said he thought the plan \u201cmakes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he said he did not expect the Trump administration would spend taxpayer dollars for the effort. <\/p>\n

\u201cI do not expect that they would,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congressional lawmakers from both parties are signaling that despite President Donald Trump’s assertion that he will control the money gained from selling Venezuelan oil turned over to the United States, they\u2019ll want to check the books. Democrats said they were appalled by the Trump administration\u2019s plans to sell Venezuelan oil \u201cindefinitely\u201d and control the revenue, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}