2026

Jan 3 (Reuters) – Venezuela’s oil exports, which had fallen to a minimum amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s announced blockade of all sanctioned tankers going in and out of the country’s waters, are now paralyzed as port captains have not received requests to authorize loaded ships to set sail, four sources close to operations said on Saturday.

The paralysis emerges as the U.S. extracted President Nicolas Maduro and his wife from capital Caracas and announced it will oversee a political transition in the South American country.

President Trump said on Saturday that an “oil embargo” on the country was in full effect.

Several vessels that have recently loaded crude and fuel bound for destinations including the U.S. and Asia have not set sail, while others that had waited to load have left empty, according to monitoring data. No tankers were loading on Saturday at the country’s main oil port of Jose, TankerTrackers.com said.

A total suspension of oil exports, including tankers chartered by state-run PDVSA’s main partner Chevron, could accelerate the country’s need to cut back output at oilfields, since storage tanks and even ships used for floating storage have filled rapidly in recent weeks, according to sources and PDVSA’s documents.

PDVSA and Chevron did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Marianna Parraga and Reuters Staff; Editing by Julia Symmes-Cobb)

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CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Uncertainty gripped Venezuela on Saturday as people scrambled to understand who was in charge of the South American country after a U.S. military operation captured President Nicolás Maduro.

“What will happen tomorrow? What will happen in the next hour? Nobody knows,” Caracas resident Juan Pablo Petrone said.

President Donald Trump delivered a shocking pick for who would take control: The United States, perhaps in coordination with one of Maduro’s most trusted aides.

Delcy Rodríguez has served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018, overseeing much of Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy as well as its feared intelligence service. But she is someone the Trump administration apparently is willing to work with, at least for now.

“She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump told reporters of Rodríguez, who faced U.S. sanctions during Trump’s first administration for her role in undermining Venezuelan democracy.

Long lines wound through supermarkets and outside gas stations as Venezuelans long used to crises stocked up once again. Small pro-government rallies broke out in parts of Caracas, but most streets remained empty in the nation of 29 million people.

In a major snub, Trump said opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, didn’t have the support to run the country.

Trump said Rodríguez had a long conversation with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in which Trump claimed she said, “‘We’ll do whatever you need.’”

“I think she was quite gracious,” Trump added. “We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.”

Rodríguez tried to project strength and unity among the ruling party’s many factions, downplaying any hint of betrayal. In remarks on state TV, she demanded the immediate release of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and denounced the U.S. operation as a flagrant violation of the United Nations charter.

“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” Rodríguez said, surrounded by top civilian officials and military commanders.

There was no immediate sign that the U.S. was running Venezuela.

Trump indicated that Rodríguez had been sworn in already as president of Venezuela, per the transfer of power outlined in the constitution. However, state television has not broadcast any swearing-in ceremony.

In her televised address, Rodríguez did not declare herself acting president or mention a political transition. A ticker at the bottom of the screen identified her as the vice president. She gave no sign that she would be cooperating with the U.S.

“What is being done to Venezuela is an atrocity that violates international law,” she said. “History and justice will make the extremists who promoted this armed aggression pay.”

The Venezuelan constitution also says a new election must be called within a month in the event of the president’s absence. But experts have been debating whether the succession scenario would apply here, given the government’s lack of popular legitimacy and the extraordinary U.S. military intervention.

Venezuelan military officials were quick to project defiance in video messages.

“They have attacked us but will not break us,” said Defense Minister Gen. Vladimir Padrino López, dressed in fatigues.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello appeared on state TV in a helmet and flak jacket, urging Venezuelans to “trust in the political leadership and military” and “get out on the streets” to defend the country’s sovereignty.

“These rats attacked and they will regret what they did,” he said of the U.S.

Caracas residents like Yanire Lucas were left picking up shattered glass and other debris after an early-morning explosion in a military base next to her house.

“What is happening is unprecedented,” Lucas said, adding that her family is scared to leave home. “We’re still on edge, and now we’re uncertain about what to do.”

A lawyer educated in Britain and France, Rodríguez has a long history of representing the revolution started by the late Hugo Chávez on the world stage.

She and her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, head of the Maduro-controlled National Assembly, have strong leftist credentials born from tragedy. Their father was a socialist leader who died in police custody in the 1970s, a crime that shook many activists of the era, including a young Maduro.

Unlike many in Maduro’s inner circle, the Rodríguez siblings have avoided criminal indictment in the U.S. Delcy Rodríguez has developed strong ties with Republicans in the oil industry and on Wall Street who balked at the notion of U.S.-led regime change.

Among her past interlocutors was Blackwater founder Erik Prince and, more recently, Richard Grenell, a Trump special envoy who tried to negotiate a deal with Maduro for greater U.S. influence in Venezuela.

Fluent in English, Rodríguez is sometimes portrayed as a well-educated moderate in contrast to the military hardliners who took up arms with Chávez against Venezuela’s democratically elected president in the 1990s.

Many of them, especially Cabello, are wanted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges and stand accused of serious human rights abuses. But they continue to hold sway over the armed forces, the traditional arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela.

That presents major challenges to Rodríguez asserting authority. But experts say that Venezuela’s power brokers have long had a habit of closing ranks behind their leaders.

“These leaders have all seen the value of staying united. Cabello has always taken a second seat or third seat, knowing that his fate is tied up with Maduro’s, and now he very well might do that again,” said David Smilde, a sociology professor at Tulane University who has conducted research into Venezuela’s political dynamics over the past three decades.

“A lot depends on what happened last night, which officials were taken out, what the state of the military looks like now,” Smilde said. “If it doesn’t have much firepower anymore, they’re more vulnerable and diminished and it will be easier for her to gain control.”

Shortly before Trump’s press conference, Machado, the opposition leader, called on her ally Edmundo González — a retired diplomat widely considered to have won the country’s disputed 2024 presidential election — to “immediately assume his constitutional mandate and be recognized as commander-in-chief.”

In an triumphant statement, Machado promised that her movement would “restore order, free political prisoners, build an exceptional country and bring our children back home.”

She added: “Today we are prepared to assert our mandate and take power.”

Asked about Machado, Trump was blunt: “I think it would be very tough for (Machado) to be the leader,” he said.

“She doesn’t have the support or respect within the country.”

Venezuelans expressed shock, with many speculating on social media that Trump had mixed up the two women’s names. Machado has not responded to Trump’s remarks.

___

Associated Press reporter Joshua Goodman contributed to this report from Miami. Debre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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By Gram Slattery and Simon Lewis

PALM BEACH, Florida/WASHINGTON, Jan 3 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Venezuela, arrest its president and temporarily run the country marks a striking departure for a politician who long criticized others for overreaching on foreign affairs and vowed to avoid foreign entanglements.

His vision for U.S. involvement in Venezuela, sketched out in a midday news conference, left open the possibility of more military action, ongoing involvement in that nation’s politics and oil industry and “boots on the ground.” The term suggests military deployment of the sort that presidents often avoid for fear of provoking domestic political backlash.

 “We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump said.

He gave little sense of how far he was willing to go to gain control of Venezuela, where Maduro’s top aides appeared to be still in power.

‘THE WARS WE NEVER GET INTO’

As recently as his inauguration for a second term last January, Trump told supporters: “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, by the wars we never get into.” 

Since then, Trump has bombed targets in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Yemen and Somalia, blown up dozens of alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and made veiled threats to invade Greenland and Panama.

The overnight attack on Venezuela was his most aggressive foreign military action yet, striking the capital Caracas and other parts of the country and capturing President Nicolas Maduro and his wife to face drug-trafficking charges in New York.

These developments ran counter to some Republican hopes that the president would focus more on voters’ domestic concerns – affordability, health care and the economy. 

Trump told the news conference that intervening in Venezuela was in line with his “America First” policy.

 “We want to surround ourselves with good neighbors. We want to surround ourself with stability. We want to surround ourself with energy,” he said, referring to Venezuela’s oil reserves.

But the emerging political stakes were captured by a social media post from U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, who has broken with Trump because of what she said has been his departure from the America First rhetoric of limiting foreign adventures. She is resigning from Congress next week.

“This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end. Boy were we wrong.”

RISK OF QUAGMIRE

Trump’s ongoing attention to foreign affairs provides fuel for Democrats to criticize Trump ahead of midterm congressional elections in November, when control of both houses of Congress is likely to turn on just a few races across the United States. Republicans narrowly control both right now, giving the president a largely free hand to enact his agenda.

“Let me be clear, Maduro is an illegitimate dictator, but launching military action without congressional authorization, without a federal plan for what comes next, is reckless,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a call with reporters.

 Trump has worked to end several foreign conflicts, including in Ukraine and Gaza, while lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize. But U.S. military actions tend to draw more public attention and historically have carried more political risk for presidents and their parties.

Polls have shown that, before the attack, the prospect of U.S. military action in Venezuela was unpopular, with roughly one out of five Americans supporting force to depose Maduro, according to a November Reuters/Ipsos survey.

REPUBLICAN DEBATE OVER FOREIGN POLICY

Trump’s top diplomat and national security adviser Marco Rubio called several members of Congress early on Saturday in an effort to blunt opposition to military action. 

Mike Lee, a prominent libertarian-leaning senator, initially questioned the administration taking military action without a declaration of war or authorization for the use of military force, but wrote on X he concluded that the operation likely fell within the president’s authority after speaking to Rubio.

Republican Representative Thomas Massie, a frequent Trump critic, wrote in a post on X that Trump’s warning of further strikes on Venezuela “Doesn’t seem the least bit consistent” with Rubio’s characterization to Lee. “If this action were constitutionally sound, the Attorney General wouldn’t be tweeting that they’ve arrested the President of a sovereign country and his wife for possessing guns in violation of a 1934 U.S. firearm law,” Massie wrote in a separate post.

U.S. ‘WILL GET TANGLED UP’

For a president who has consistently contrasted himself with the Republican “neoconservatives” of the late 20th century, Trump’s foreign policy has developed striking similarities with that of his predecessors.

 In 1983, under former President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. invaded Grenada, claiming that the government at that time was illegitimate, a claim Trump has also made with respect to Maduro.

In 1989, former President George H.W. Bush invaded Panama to depose dictator Manuel Noriega who, like Maduro, was wanted on U.S. drug-trafficking charges. In that case, the U.S. installed Noriega’s replacement.

Elliott Abrams, who served as Venezuela envoy in Trump’s first term, said he did not believe the president was running a political risk at home in ousting Maduro and that he “has a lot of latitude as long as American troops are not dying.” But he acknowledged: “I don’t know what running Venezuela means.”

“He’s done the right thing in removing Maduro,” said Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank. “The question is whether he will do the right thing in supporting democracy in Venezuela.”

Brett Bruen, a former foreign policy adviser in Barack Obama’s administration, said the U.S. could now be sucked into overseeing a complex transition process.  

“I don’t see any short version of this story,” said Bruen, now head of the Global Situation Room, an international affairs consultancy. “The U.S. will get tangled up in Venezuela but will also have new problems to contend with related to its neighbors.”

(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Palm Beach, Florida, and by Simon Lewis in Washington; additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Craig Timberg and Suzanne Goldenberg)

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