Trump kidnapped Venezuela’s president. Now he’s hijacking its future

The only thing missing from Donald Trump’s Venezuelan oil deal, so far, in Donald Trump Jr.

It has all the trademarks of a Trump deal, combining boldness and aggression with self-interest, albeit without, to date, Trump family participation.

Early this year, the Trump administration kidnapped Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Madura, seized control of its oil revenues and gave its backing to its unelected vice-president, (Maduro’s vice-president), Delcy Rodríguez.

According to Financial Times’ estimates, the US has collected about $US13 billion ($A18 billion) of revenue from Venezuelan oil sales – ostensibly on Venezuela’s behalf – but it would seem only a fraction of the proceeds, held in a trust account in Qatar to protect them from the US courts, have found their back to Venezuela.

After Maduro’s capture, Trump prophesied a boom in US oil company investment in Venezuela. Apart from Chevron, which retained operations in the country after the assets of other US oil companies were expropriated and nationalised by the Chavez regime in 2007, there’s been little if any activity.

Venezuela’s oil production remains at around a million barrels a day, a far cry from the 3.5 million barrels a day it was producing in the 1970s, before the first wave of nationalisation, or the 2.5 million barrels a day it was producing as recently as 2014.