> Trump arrested Maduro before he met with oil executives, only to find out that they would not invest in Venezuela.

President Trump is fuming at Chevron and ExxonMobil for “making too much money” during his Iran war. Wait until he figures out that seven months after he hosted Big Oil at the White House, asking for some $100 billion in new investments in Venezuela, the country is reported to have the same number of active drilling rigs it had this time last year: two.

Drilling rigs are a measure of investor confidence. In 1997-98, when Venezuelan production reached nearly 3.4 million barrels a day, there were some 119 active drilling rigs in the country. Even if a Reuters story from April is correct and 14 rigs in storage could soon return to the field, Venezuela is a long way from the oil boom the administration forecasts.

My reporting indicates that investors are holding back because they want assurances the government’s take will be fair and that they will have contractual security and freedom from bureaucratic overreach. Simply passing an institutional reform, as the dictatorship did in late January, isn’t enough.

Mr. Trump’s critics allege that the president is only after oil and doesn’t care if the tyranny remains in power. It’s more likely that the costs of getting Caracas to knuckle under to elections are too high right now for the president. He’s bogged down with Iran and he wants the crude to flow. Caracas reads this and sees no urgency to yield. He has neither a carrot nor a stick to influence matters.

The regime is good at dialogue. It buys time and takes Venezuelans nowhere. Notably absent from this one is Venezuela’s most popular politician, María Corina Machado. She hasn’t been allowed to enter the country and there’s reason to worry that if she did, her life would be in danger. That tells you all you need to know about how serious the regime is about elections.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trumps-vene … =djemITP_h


It's almost as if this wasn't fully thought through.
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