President Trump Participates in a Meeting with Oil and Gas Executives

Do we need more refineries in our country? Maryann Mannen, Marathon Petroleum: In the U.S., probably not. We have sufficient capacity.

That's amazing. A lot of it was approved during my first term, we were getting you approvals that nobody could have gotten in Louisiana and other places and they got built. Before that it was a disaster, we didn't have the refineries, now we do because of the first term. Please. Darren Woods, CEO, ExxonMobil: Darren Woods, ExxonMobil. Okay, we'll go over here. Thank you Mr. President. Jeff Hildebrand, founder uh and chairman of Hilcorp Energy, one of the private... one of the largest private energy companies in America.

Who's bigger, you or Harold? We're close. Huh? We're close. Harold, Harold. Absolutely, Mr. Hamm. Uh, but thank you for your uh, great tremendous leadership in protecting the interests in the Western Hemisphere. The message that you have sent to China and our enemies to stay out of our backyard is absolutely fantastic. So thank you. Thank you very much. And finally, Hilcorp is fully committed and ready to go to rebuilding the infrastructure in Venezuela. You'll go there? You'll be going? Yes. Good. That's good. You'll be very happy. Thank you very much. Uh, thank you, Mr. President. Jeff Miller, uh, CEO of Halliburton Company. We are the largest American oilfield services company, we're the second largest in the world. Been in business over a hundred years. Started operations in Venezuela in 1938. Uh, long time in Venezuela. Uh, I personally lived there for four years and raised my kids there. So, quite familiar with Venezuela and just couldn't express gratitude more so for the opportunity to return to Venezuela under uh, the stability that I know that this team and your team are able to deliver. And so I thank you. When did you leave? Huh? When did you leave Venezuela? Jeff Miller, CEO, Halliburton Company: Uh, as a company we left under the sanctions in 2019. So we had intended to stay and then when the sanctions went into place we were required to leave. Uh, but very much interested in returning. We have 600 Venezuelans with Halliburton today all around the world. Look forward to putting them back to work.

Great job. Great job. You'll be back. Please. Alex Cranberg, Aspect Energy: Mr. President, I'm Alex Cranberg, uh my company Aspect Energy is one of the leading American international wildcatters. We've found significant fields in Central and South America... Are you a wildcatter? I'm a wildcatter. That's pretty cool, I'll tell you. I would have been a wildcatter too if I was in... and you've been successfully wildcatting? We've... we've found significant fields in Central and South America, in the Middle East and in Europe. We're a leading oil producer in Hungary. That's great. But our probably the most pertinent example is our... is what a wildcatter does is take on risk and try to reduce it, and then other people come in and put more capital in later, so we're kind of kickstarters in the oil industry. Uh, we went into Kurdistan very early on back when people told us it wasn't safe and we shouldn't do it. Right. We found a big field there and ultimately it's got to be developed uh along with one of my colleagues here to be one of the leading fields in Kurdistan. Uh, we think that Venezuela has a tremendous amount of opportunity. If you look at the reinvestment required, the investment required, people are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, but if you put that in perspective, that's a million barrels a day for 15 years, it's $220 billion net cash flow. So what we really need to do is be able to kickstart this production and then reinvest and have the confidence to reinvest. And what you're doing by putting the United States in control of the cash flow coming out of the country gives country... companies like ours the confidence to say we can kickstart this production and then reinvest and reinvest. In Hungary we've invested a billion dollars in changing the trajectory of Hungarian oil production and we were only able to do that not because we could write a billion-dollar check, we're a smaller company, but because we reinvest all the cash flow back into new production. Good.

Good job. Mark Nelson with Chevron again. Sure. Claudio Descalzi, CEO, ENI: Thank you, Mr. President. I'm Claudio Descalzi, ENI CEO, Italy. We... we started working in Venezuela in 1980. We have a lot of oil but now just the gas is flowing because it's not under sanction. And as my colleague from Repsol said, we cover more than about 50% of the uh, electricity in the country, so that is essential to avoid any kind of problem, social problem. Uh, we own about 4 billion barrels of reserves, so a huge amount in the Orinoco Belt and in Central Venezuela. We have uh, now in the country 500 people, uh most Venezuelans. And uh, we are ready to invest clearly, we are ready to invest. We thank you for what, for the big efforts and the efficiency of our, your action and we are here. And uh, we are here to work together with the U.S. We are also big investor in the in the U.S., in the U.S. I know that. Uh, we thank you again and uh, we are there. And uh, we are all ready also ready to join with American companies in our assets to develop and go faster with good investors and good know-how from the U.S. company. Yeah. Thank you. You've done a great job. Thank you very much.

Mr. President, Ross Perot, good to see you again. I'm chairman of Hillwood and HK&N Energy, been in the energy business 45 years. And we have been working with your team quite a bit. We have been in Kurdistan now for 19 years along with Alex and built up a very good business. But now with your team we're looking in Syria, we're now in Libya, and so we are very excited to look at Venezuela with you and your group and look forward to uh, continuing to build this great industry. Thank you very much. Thank you. Wael Sawan, CEO, Shell: Mr. President, thank you for having us here today. Wael Sawan from Shell. Uh, of course we have a huge presence here in the U.S., in the Gulf, as well as in Pennsylvania with the petrochemical facility which I think we had the opportunity to host you at, uh as well as being one of the largest LNG off-takers of American LNG. We have been in Venezuela for a very long time. We actually drilled in 1914 the first well that discovered oil in Venezuela and on the back of which the entire energy industry was established in Venezuela. Um, when we left in the 1970s because of nationalization we had a million barrels per day of production. Uh, but we have kept boots on the ground in Venezuela all this time and we now have a few billion dollars worth of opportunities to invest in subject to OFAC approval. So we are ready to go and looking forward to the investments in support of... of the Venezuelan people. That's great. Thank you very much. Ben Marshall, Vitol: Uh, thank you Mr. President. Ben Marshall, the American CEO for Vitol. Um, alongside Trafigura we're very thankful to have worked with the government and the Venezuelans to be able to bring the crude oil to market at a market price as quickly as we can to help stabilize the country. Thank you. Thank you. Ryan Lance, CEO, ConocoPhillips: Ryan Lance, ConocoPhillips, I'll defer to my colleagues. Olivier Le Peuch, CEO, SLB: Thank you, Mr. President. Olivier Le Peuch, CEO of SLB, formerly known as Schlumberger, the largest global oilfield services. We have been in Venezuela since um, 1930 and we still operate. We operate today on the ground with in support of Chevron. We have ability to scale, we have 1,100 Venezuelans in the company, 2,000 additional that are calling us to go back to country and to go back to work. We are able to mobilize in less uh in the last 18 months uh two rigs and uh deliver 50 wells with success. So we are here, we have knowledge of the subsurface like nobody else has, we have boots on the ground, capacity on the ground, $700 million of equipment value on the ground in Venezuela ready to mobilize for all of our partners, customers. So we are ready to scale fast and we really want to thank the administration, Secretary Wright, Secretary Burgum for the effort they are supporting and giving us to be successful on behalf of the Venezuelan oil and gas industry. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Well, check this out, they say the very best for last. And I don't have that sexy accent like this guy next to me here. Uh, Mr. President, my name's Bill Armstrong of Armstrong Oil and Gas, I'm a private independent guy, and in real estate you were a wildcatter. So wear that... wear that motto proudly, actually. But like you, I would say I'm my own guy and I don't have shareholders, I don't have private equity partners, but I've been drilling all over the place. In fact, I had the largest discovery in Alaska, uh biggest discovery in 50 years in our country. I now control 8 million acres adjacent to Venezuela, so I'm already heavily invested in the area. We share a 150-mile border with Venezuela in the countries of Aruba and Curacao and we are ready to go to Venezuela. It is in real estate terms, it is prime real estate and it's kind of like West Palm about 50 years ago. Uh, very ripe. Yep. I agree with you. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. So, I think what we're going to do is uh speak without the press to these gentlemen, see what kind of a deal we can make. Uh, we're going to get them involved. I'm going to ask uh Doug and Chris and uh some of the people that we have from the business standpoint representing our country to uh start talking about the confines of a deal. We have... I have an idea what I want, what I think we should have. Uh, we have to get them to invest and then we have to get their money back as quickly as we can and then we can divvy it all up between Venezuela, the United States and them. Um, I think it's simple. I think the formula is simple. We start with a brand new plate and it's going to be a tremendous success. I think it's going to be probably like few other things could ever be, you don't... there's so much, there's so much. Uh, Venezuela's been uh really taken advantage of by a lot of people 'cause they drill very little, I mean as much as you hear they have, they drill very, very little, very small percentage. But now that'll change and it'll change very rapidly 'cause these are the biggest people and it'll change very rapidly. So, if you don't mind I'll ask the press to leave and we will see what kind of a deal we're going to make with these geniuses and uh I think you're going to come out very good. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.