US Involvement in Venezuela: Did America Invade for Oil?

Maduro's ouster came after months of U.S. lethal strikes on vessels allegedly transporting drugs for U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) tied to Maduro, seizures of vessels transporting sanctioned Venezuelan oil, and a drone strike that destroyed a port facility.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Hours after an audacious military operation that plucked leader Nicolás Maduro from power and removed him from the country, President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States would run Venezuela at least temporarily and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations. The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on the South American nation and its autocratic leader and months of secret planning resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

WATCH: 'We want it back': Trump ... to do so. In general, experts have told PolitiFact that invading a country to take its oil would be both illegal and unethical....

He pledged to continue the military buildup until Venezuela returned to the U.S. oil, land and assets, though it was unclear why Trump felt the U.S. had a claim. The U.S. military said it attacked a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing four people. House Republicans rejected a pair of Democratic-backed resolutions that would have put a check on Trump's power to use military force against drug cartels and Venezuela.

BBC Verify uses open-source intelligence, satellite imagery, fact-checking and data analysis to help report complex stories · This feed is where we post our work throughout the day ... We’ve spent much of the day focused on the aftermath of the US strikes on Venezuela and the seizure of President Nicolás Maduro, who appeared in court today. Here’s a quick recap of our coverage: Speaking to experts experts about Donald Trump’s claim Venezuela has “stolen” US oil

President Donald Trump said a core objective of the recent military operation in Venezuela was to place the country’s oil sector under US control, and give US oil companies the ability to rebuild there. “The oil companies are going to go in and rebuild their system,” Trump said Sunday night. “It was the greatest theft in the history of America.

When the former Guardian journalist Seumas Milne and I interviewed Nicolás Maduro in 2014, Maduro warned of the lengths the US was willing to go to “get their hands on Venezuelan oil”. The country’s Orinoco Belt contains easily the biggest reserves in the world – more than 300bn barrels, a fifth of global stock.

The US navy has amassed a huge fleet off the Venezuelan coast since September, carried out airstrikes against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific and seized Venezuelan oil tankers. At least 110 people have been killed in the strikes on boats, which human rights groups say could amount to war crimes. The attack was the largest, most direct US action in Latin America since the 1989 Panama invasion.

Maduro’s last known interview, broadcast on Venezuelan state television just hours before American forces swooped into Caracas and captured him, and it provided a final glimpse into the mind of the Venezuelan autocrat as the U.S. military was pressing in. As he steered a silver Toyota S.U.V. with his wife, Cilia Flores, in the back seat, Mr. Maduro boasted about his success running Venezuela and accused President Trump of devising pretexts to invade his nation.