nuclear-news.net · Feb 17, 2026 · Collected from GDELT
Published: 20260217T104500Z
Max Blumenthal, THE GRAYZONE, February 13, 2026 An attendee told The Grayzone that oil industry heavyweights were less excited about Trump’s Venezuela policy, privately complaining about the President’s aggressive push to restart their operations. When the American Petroleum Institute (API) gathered oil industry leaders and lobbyists for a “State of American Energy” summit on January 16, 2026, the geopolitical landscape seemed to be shifting dramatically in their favor. However, an attendee of the resource extraction cartel’s most important annual lobbying conference told The Grayzone that participants privately grumbled about President Donald Trump’s heavy-handed attempts to steer their agenda, particularly in Venezuela, where he has demanded they immediately restart operations. Two weeks before the API summit, the US military kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a violent raid, enabling the Trump administration to commandeer the country’s oil reserves. Meanwhile, foreign-backed riots left thousands dead in oil-rich Iran on January 8 and 9, generating enough instability to excite Western governments about the prospects of regime change. From the stage at Washington DC’s Anthem theater, veteran industry consultant Bob McNally of the Rapidan Energy Group could not contain his excitement over the prospect of toppling the Islamic Republic of Iran. “Iran holds the biggest promise as well, though they’re the biggest risk, but the biggest opportunity,” McNally proclaimed. “If you can imagine the United States opening an embassy in Tehran, the regime in Tehran reflecting its people – the most pro American population outside of Israel in the Middle East, culturally, commercially adept – historic. If you can imagine our industry going back there, we would get a lot more oil, a lot sooner than we will out of Venezuela.” According to McNally, who formerly advised President George W. Bush on energy policy, a US regime change war on Iran would be a “terrible day for Moscow, [a] wonderful day for the Iranians, the United States, the oil industry and world peace.” However, like many industry titans at the API summit, McNally saw Venezuela as a high-risk, low-return investment, even after the de facto US takeover of its resources. “Since the President’s decision to apprehend Nicolas Maduro, I think we’ve seen, you know, private conversations, the meeting at the White House, the administration has had to learn, you don’t go into Venezuela, turn a tap and 3 million barrels a day flow. It doesn’t happen like that,” he commented. McNally went on to suggest the oil industry was pushing back on Trump’s demands that it immediately reinvest in Venezuela: “The prize in Venezuela is getting back from below a million barrels a day to between three and four million barrels a day, and that we will measure in many years and many decades. And that’s the truth. And the industry is speaking that truth to the administration.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. The oil lobby sponsors a TV show to glorify itself The API “State of American Energy” summit’s program closed with a session which demonstrated the power of America’s oil lobby to influence Hollywood content. On stage beside actor Andy Garcia, a star of a new Paramount+ show, Landman, API President Mike Sommers boasted about his role in sponsoring a dramatic series which glorifies a heavily maligned industry on a Trump-aligned network. According to Axios, API provided Landman with “a seven figure ad campaign,” ensuring the show’s viability on Paramount+, a network purchased in 2025 by the pro-Trump, ultra-Zionist billionaire heir David Ellison. Landman’s plotlines sell viewers on the image of America’s extraction industry as a vital force that is entitled to bend the rules and make crooked deals in order to keep the oil flowing. In one episode, the roguish “landman” protagonist Tommy Norris, played by Billy Bob Thornton, finds himself involved in a turf war with a Mexican narco-cartel which controls a valuable plot of land. To increase his leverage over the cartel, Tommy threatens to trigger Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) involvement unless they stand down. Ultimately, the cartel agrees to co-exist with Tommy’s company, M-Tex Oil, ensuring secure drilling and lucrative profits. It’s a plot that could have been ripped from actual headlines about the US oil industry’s secret dealings with Mexican cartels and designated terrorist groups. And just months after the Trump administration initiated a legally dubious anti-drug operation off Venezuela’s coast to increase pressure on Maduro, who now languishes in a federal prison cell as Washington dictates energy policy to Caracas, the API-sponsored Landman feels increasingly like predictive programming. https://thegrayzone.com/2026/02/13/iran-war-opportunity-oil-lobbys/ February 17, 2026 - Posted by | politics international, USA No comments yet.