Subject: Venezuelan Oil Investment
Trump had his meeting with all the big oil companies yesterday, and it went kind of how you would expect. The oil majors had tons of questions about how this could possibly make sense for them, and by most accounts it looks like there aren't really any great answers yet.

With oil prices <$60 per barrel, it doesn't make a lot of economic sense for those guys to spend billions in Venezuela even if the country was in better shape. And it's not in better shape - it's still being run by the same guys who stole all the oil majors' money last time, with a dollop of extra political risk thrown in because the head of state just got forcibly removed. Which makes the big energy companies hesitant.

As noted in our other discussions, Trump could try to line up a lot of financial sweeteners to try to subsidize the oil majors into going in. But that requires Congress, and that's going to be a rough lift for him. Especially since there's going to be some opposition from domestic oil producers who are already smarting from low prices, and aren't going to be excited to see federal resources going to support a foreign source of oil that's going to compete with them. So his strongest allies in Congress, who come from energy producing states, are going to be a little whipsawed from their constituents.

It's still very early days, but it's easy to imagine that the Administration's focus on massive investments in Venezuela will end up very much like their focus on massive investments in Gaza. Something that they fondly imagine, but don't really have the political resources (domestically or globally) to make it happen. Or to solve the governance/security situation so that private market players will make it happen. And since there's so many other bright shiny objects on the horizon to capture the Administration's focus and resources going forward (Greenland! Cuba! Colombia! Iran!)...well, we'll see how this goes.