The US military carried out a series of air strikes on Venezuela's capital Caracas early on Saturday. Maduro and his wife were captured and flown to New York City, where they face drug-trafficking and weapons charges.

"We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country," Trump told a news conference in Florida.

Trump also said that "the embargo on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect."

Washington imposed economic sanctions on Venezuela in 2017, followed by oil sanctions two years later.

Venezuela produces just under a million barrels of crude a day, according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and sells most of it on the black market at steep discounts.

Trump claims Caracas is using oil money to finance "drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping."

At the start of his second term in 2025, he ended licenses that had allowed multinational oil and gas companies to operate in Venezuela despite the sanctions, with US company Chevron the only one to receive an exemption.

Chevron operates four oil fields in Venezuela in partnership with state-owned PDVSA and its affiliates.

Washington has also imposed a total blockade on sanctioned tankers going to and from Venezuela.

Venezuelan territory contains about 17 percent of the world's oil reserves, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2023, but is far from being a leading producer after years of mismanagement and corruption.

Venezuelan oil is of lower quality and is mostly processed into diesel or byproducts such as asphalt, rather than gasoline. The United States has refineries around the Gulf of Mexico specifically designed to handle it.

"The United States is doing just fine without Venezuelan oil," Stephen Schork, an analyst at consulting firm the Schork Group, told AFP last month, pointing to political reasons instead.

Earlier on Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron said that Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia should help oversee the change in power in Venezuela, after the capture of President Maduro by US armed forces.

"The transition to come must be peaceful, democratic, and respectful of the will of the Venezuelan people. We hope that President Edmundo González Urrutia, elected in 2024, will be able to ensure this transition as quickly as possible," wroteMacron on X.

Macron added in a subsequent message on X that he had also spoken to Venezuelan opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado.

"I fully support her call for the release and protection of the political prisoners of Nicolás Maduro's regime. Like all Venezuelans, she can count on France's support to carry the voice of a peaceful, democratic transition that fully respects the sovereign will of the Venezuelan people," wrote Macron.

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