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Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
The thing that is kind of in the back of my mind is that Trump is saying that the oil companies are going to go in there and spend money to get their oil industry working again, but can he actually force them to? Did he even talk to them before this?
I get that if things work out, the oil companies can make a killing by investing there, but it still seems really risky with no real regime change and no guarantee that they just won't nationalize it again in the future. The next Chavez or Maduro could just say thanks, and take it again and the whole gunpoint diplomacy has to repeat.
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Nobody can force oil companies to go anywhere, and that’s not how this would work. These are shareholder-owned businesses, not NOCs, and they won’t spend real money unless the risk-adjusted returns make sense. What’s happening now isn’t coercion, it’s probing. Governments absolutely talk to companies quietly beforehand to ask “under what conditions would you come back,” and the answers are always the same: security, enforceable contracts, and confidence the rules won’t flip again in five years. Until those things are in place, capital stays on the sidelines. The nationalization risk you’re pointing out is exactly why companies aren’t rushing in, and why any initial production bump would come from operational fixes, not massive new investment. Big money only shows up if the legal and political structure changes in a durable way; if it doesn’t, the oil stays in the ground, regardless of what any politician says.
The part they are underestimating right now is the security side as I already mentioned. Right now there are foreign armed groups operating in the country, including Russian Wagner elements and Hezbollah-linked militias, and that is a non-starter for serious investment. Boards care less about political headlines and more about whether people and assets can be protected day-to-day. Until those groups are gone and there are credible security guarantees on the ground, even the most attractive contracts won’t unlock large-scale capital.