By Saidu Abubakar
In furtherance of incisive analysis of the global energy landscape with US-Venezuela tension as central, renown petroleum economist, Prof. Emeritus Wumi Iledare, PhD, PEPE, FEIN, FNAEE, SnrFUSAEE, has dug through Donald Trump’s White House meeting with oil CEOs to project his Venezuela plans.
The White House meeting, he observed, underscores a fundamental tension between political ambition and investment realism in upstream petroleum development.
“President Trump’s push for a $100 billion U.S. oil industry recommitment to Venezuela collides directly with the industry’s assessment of sovereign risk, institutional credibility, and capital discipline. ExxonMobil’s blunt characterization of Venezuela as “uninvestable” is not rhetorical — it is a textbook verdict grounded in political economy and investment theory,” the Prof argued.
The meeting with oil company CEOs over Venezuela says more about institutions than oil. “The country is not short of hydrocarbons; it is short of trust. When Exxon’s CEO called Venezuela “uninvestable,” he was not being political—he was stating an economic fact. After repeated expropriations, weak legal protections, and policy reversals, no serious oil company can commit long-term capital on presidential assurances alone.
“This is the real lesson for resource-rich countries, including Nigeria. Investors respond to rules, not rhetoric. Security promises, fiscal incentives, and patriotic appeals cannot substitute for durable institutions, contract sanctity, and regulatory credibility. Until those fundamentals are fixed, big investment numbers will remain headlines—not outcomes.”
Certainly, according to Prof. Iledare, President Tinubu deserves commendation for appointing Board members to the PIA regulatory institutions — an important institutional milestone long overdue. “Yet, the reform journey remains incomplete. Nigeria urgently requires the appointment of a substantive, accountable sector coordinator to provide strategic coherence to the oil and gas industry. I made this case during the Buhari administration, and the risks of inaction are even more pronounced today,” Iledare lamented.
Without clear leadership anchored in the spirit and letter of the PIA, Nigeria’s oil and gas industry risks being governed through transactional improvisation rather than institutional discipline, he said, stressing that: “hstory shows that resource abundance cannot compensate for governance deficits. Venezuela’s experience stands as a cautionary tale of how weak coordination, policy inconsistency, and discretionary leadership can render even the richest hydrocarbon endowments uninvestable.”
Prof. Iledare who is also the chairman of IGEP, Abuja concluded that “Nigeria still has the opportunity to choose a different path — but that choice must be deliberate, timely, and anchored in credible leadership.”
