War for Oil: How Billionaire Political Donors Stand to Make a Huge Profit from Venezuela

At Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, President Trump directly stated that the US government’s operation to bomb Venezuela and capture President Nicolas Maduro was a “deal” to “take back” Venezuelan oil. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies — the biggest anywhere in the world — go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure.”

There is so much to say about this invasion of Venezuela, but I want to focus on one relevant case study of the Republican oligarchy: Elliott Investment Management, a hedge fund based in New York, and its President and CEO, Paul Singer, whose net worth is an estimated $6.7 billion. Singer is one of the biggest political donors in U.S. history: He’s supported President Trump, Marco Rubio, and many other Republican politicians, and during the 2024 election cycle he gave $41.25 million to Republican causes.

Meanwhile, a subsidiary of Elliott is in the process of acquiring Citgo, an oil company whose assets include three U.S. oil refineries and the brand license on thousands of gas stations, previously owned by the Venezuelan government. Under Maduro, who opposed the sale, it was unclear whether Elliott would ultimately be able to operate Citgo. Now, with Maduro in a jail cell in Brooklyn, that seems much more likely.

There’s a lot more to say about Elliott and Singer, but first there’s a bigger picture: The GOP and Trump Administration have already demonstrated their allegiance to the oil and gas industry, one of its major patrons. Last year, also at Mar-a-Lago, Trump asked oil CEOs to give $1 billion to his campaign and then he’d repay them with favors from the White House. According to Open Secrets data, the oil and gas industry spent $249 million during the 2024 election cycle, and according to an analysis by End Citizens United, the overwhelming majority of that money went to Republican candidates. Since then, the Trump Administration has handed over oil and gas permits, doled out tax breaks, and taken numerous other actions that favor the fossil fuel industry.

At the same time, the almost certainly illegal action in Venezuela fits multiple patterns that have become familiar over the last year – and American history. Trump has aggressively pushed to expand presidential powers in numerous ways that legal experts have argued violate the law, not least of which is bombing boats and killing scores of people in what appears to be a violation of the Geneva Convention.

This recent military action is not wholly unprecedented when we consider that the United States has at different moments taken control of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and our military has interfered in Bolivia, Honduras, and other countries all over the world, most recently in decades-long conflicts that have cost thousands of American lives. Trump’s rationale for attacking Venezuela also falls in line with his administration’s complete failure to address climate change, and how it uses nationalistic, anti-immigrant rhetoric to defend its mass detentions, deportations, and de facto end of asylum as a path toward citizenship.

And right in line with everything we’ve seen from the Trump Administration, a lot of already rich people are going to get richer from this open corruption. It’s not just the oil and gas companies who stand to gain. Defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, major political donors, have the opportunity to financially benefit from an increased military presence, including American servicemembers on the ground, should Trump follow through with his stated intention to deploy troops to protect oil assets. Mining companies will also profit. And Wall Street, including big Republican donors, are also poised to reap significant profits from Venezuelan oil.

That brings us back to Elliott Management and Paul Singer. Purchasing Citgo wasn’t the first time Elliott has involved itself in Latin America. Back in the early 2000s, a subsidiary of Elliot owned a significant amount of Argentinian bonds when the country defaulted on its debts (which meant that the bonds lost value). Elliot and a few other private businesses refused to negotiate with Argentina over the debts. Instead, in an infamous and extremely influential maneuver, Elliott sued Argentina for full repayment of the bonds. After years of litigation, ultimately Argentina ended up paying Elliott over $2 billion, meaning the hedge fund reportedly made an astonishing 392% return on its original investment.

That court decision favoring Elliott paved the way for an aggressive business model: Since then, some private financial institutions (often called “vulture funds”) have prioritized buying distressed assets with the intention of suing to get high returns once debts go into default. Across the world, this business practice has exacerbated debt crises as already struggling governments have had to fork over millions and billions of dollars worth of interest payments to private financiers instead of investing in public health, climate adaptation, and all kinds of other public goods.

Why does this continue? In large part, because of widely accepted political corruption. Many of the financial firms intentionally buying distressed assets to profit from lawsuits are based in the United States. U.S. lawmakers could pass legislation to close loopholes to disincentivize these vulture funds from extracting billions of dollars of public money from the taxpayers of the world. But they don’t. Wall Street, of course, spends hundreds of millions of dollars in election donations and lobbying every year. During the 2024 election cycle, hedge funds spent $334.8 million on elections. Singer has backed opposition to reform.

Now, it’s possible that Elliott’s acquisition of Venezuela’s Citgo could turn out to be just as lucrative as its earlier bet on Argentina’s distressed assets. The Wall Street Journal called the timing of Singer’s acquisition of Citgo “auspicious” for the financier.

We don’t know if Singer directly lobbied Trump to invade Venezuela or depose Maduro, paving the way for Elliott to reap billions in profits from Citgo. But we do know Singer has met with Trump, although we can’t say for sure whether he had the President’s ear on this. And that in itself is part of the problem. We don’t know what happens when extremely wealthy people with special access and power talk with our elected officials. We have no idea what kinds of promises they’re extracting.

Neither do we know exactly how bad the situation will become for Venezuelans. We already know that for years the country has been rocked by extreme financial hardship, food lines, inconsistent electricity, and a government that represses free speech and does not hold free and fair elections. Now, the country’s oil, its primary natural resource, is being extracted to profit American companies. Even if gas prices temporarily dip in the United States, we know that the benefit to the American people will be a fraction of what corporations make.

As with everything else the GOP has done over the last year, the billionaires will benefit. The billions that Elliott made suing Argentina enabled Singer to help elect the current Republican government, and the billions of coming oil profits will enable fossil fuel titans to buy more political ads for this year’s GOP candidates. And the cycle will continue, unless Congress passes real campaign finance reform.