Rubio warns investors will ‘just invest the money in Guyana’ if Venezuela lacks certainty
United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said international energy investors are unlikely to take risks in Venezuela’s oil sector if there are no strong guarantees for property rights, contract enforcement and legal protection, warning that companies could instead choose Guyana or other oil-producing jurisdictions.
Rubio made the remarks while testifying on President Donald Trump’s approach to Venezuela, responding to questions on investor confidence and the prospects for renewed foreign investment in the country’s energy sector.
“Venezuela has a lot of oil, they do. But there’s a lot of oil in other places too,” Rubio said. “Companies are only gonna invest somewhere if they know we’re gonna make our money back with a profit and our land isn’t gonna be taken from us and if you try to, there’s a court we can go to and contracts we can enforce.”
He explained that even before considering on-the-ground conditions, potential investors would first need approval from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to explore opportunities in Venezuela.
“The first step is some of these investors or potential investors need to get a license from OFAC to be able to even to explore this,” Rubio said. “Then they need to go down there and meet with people and see what’s happening and make that determination.”
However, Rubio stressed that without a transparent and secure investment environment, companies would simply take their capital elsewhere.
“If not, they’ll just invest the money in Guyana or they’ll just invest in some other part of the world that has oil,” he said. “They’re not gonna risk it.”
The Secretary of State said Venezuela would need to normalise its oil and gas industry as part of any broader recovery process, including providing security guarantees for workers, enforceable contracts and a functioning judicial system.
“That’s part of this transition process, that’s part of this recovery process, is to normalise their industry,” Rubio said, adding that certainty and transparency were essential to attracting foreign capital.
He noted that the issue goes beyond oil, pointing to the wider economic implications of investor confidence.
“It’s to their benefit to have set up a normal transparent process that encourages foreign investment not just in oil by the way, in other natural resources but in other sectors of the economy,” Rubio said. “Whether it’s retail, whether it’s banking.”
Rubio argued that countries able to guarantee stability and predictability stand to benefit from broader economic activity.
“A country that is prosperous and generating economic activity holds the promise of all sorts of economic activity,” he said.
His comments come as Guyana continues to attract major international investment in its rapidly expanding oil and gas sector, buttressed by what investors have described as a stable legal framework and investor-friendly environment.
