The United States government has said it aims to control Venezuelan oil sales indefinitely.“We need to have that leverage and that control of those oil sales to drive the changes that simply must happen in Venezuela,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Wednesday.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listHis comments come days after US forces abducted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro on Saturday. Since then, the administration of US President Donald Trump has announced a deal under which Venezuela would turn over 30 million to 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil to the US to sell.That comes against a backdrop of demands that Venezuelan government officials open up access to US oil companies or risk further military action.On Friday, executives from several major oil companies, including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron, are slated to meet with the president to discuss potential investments in Venezuela.Can the US control Venezuelan oil sales indefinitely?“The US federal government can absolutely intervene, make demands, capture what it wants, and redirect those barrels accordingly. I don’t know of anything that would meaningfully interfere with the federal government if that’s what it decided to do,” Jeff Krimmel, founder of Krimmel Strategy Group, a Houston, Texas-based energy consulting firm, told Al Jazeera.There are, however, geopolitical hurdles. The US has less leverage than it did more than two decades ago when the US military and its allies entered Iraq, another oil-rich country. Today, other superpowers could stand in the way in ways they did not in 2003. Advertisement “When we went into Iraq, we were living …
