I admittedly don’t know much about the industry, but didn’t most other countries not elect to expropriate the infrastructure? My understanding was that a lot of the problems the Venezuelans are having now arose from alienating themselves from the international supply chains and expertise necessary to maintain the equipment used to extract and refine petroleum.

They just do not want colonizers to steal their country and interfere in their internal decisions. Unfortunately, this is the story with every First World colonizer: they do not agree with that.

They want to have their cake and eat it too. Here, the Venezuelan government invited western oil companies to develop its oil fields. Then they broke the deal and stole the infrastructure the western countries had built.

That’s very different from actual colonization, where countries showed up and expropriated resources the natives were already developing.

So strange that only the US has the expertise to do prospection and build oil rigs and no one else...

These countries are also mad at Britain and the Netherlands. In a few decades they’ll be mad at the Chinese too.

If these countries had been smarter they would have negotiated better deals and solicited competition from international companies to get the best terms. But that’s their own fault.

Oil companies were apparently compensated, but also allegedly not enough. Companies were awarded further compensation in international arbitration, but Venezuela has avoided fully paying up.

If that's all accurate there are numbers out there for what they owe, and it shouldn't be whatever the POTUS decides.