Iran war described as 'biggest opportunity' at US oil lobby’s DC summit

But an attendee told The Grayzone that oil industry heavyweights were less excited about Trump’s Venezuela policy, complaining in private about the President's push to reopen the country.

By Max Blumenthal

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.”

A week before the API summit, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods declared Venezuela “uninvestable” based on “legal and commercial constructs” put in place by the governments of former presidents Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro.

President Donald Trump responded to Woods’ statement by thundering, “I didn’t like their response, they’re playing too cute.” While Trump pledged to “keep [ExxonMobil] out” of Venezuela, he has since praised Acting President Delcy Rodriguez for enacting free market-oriented reforms to accommodate companies like ExxonMobil.

At the time of publication, US Energy Secretary and former Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright is touring Venezuela’s Orinoco oil belt alongside Acting President Rodriguez. The scenes of forced comity suggested further free market reforms to Venezuela’s PDVSA oil company may be on the way.

Above: Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez with US Energy Secretary Chris Wright at a PDVSA facility, February 11

In private, oilmen grumble about Trump’s Venezuela demands

An attendee of the API summit who was privy to backroom conversations told The Grayzone that the risks of returning to Venezuela dominated private conversations among oil industry players. They said that other participants privately echoed McNally’s dim assessment of reopening in Venezuela, and were especially concerned about potential disruption of their operations by guerrilla organizations like FARC and ELN.

The oilmen also expressed worry about alienating international partners by diverting operations to Venezuela, or by fueling competition that could deprive themselves of revenue. They seemed confused about Trump’s haste to invade Venezuela, the attendee recalled, and said they needed to educate the White House about their hesitation to leap headfirst into such an unstable environment.

The negative attitude on display at the oil industry’s most important Beltway gathering suggested that the Venezuela policy was being driven not by the extraction industry’s thirst for profits, but by the ideological passions of the South Florida lobby of Cuban and Venezuelan Americans fronted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In fact, according to the API attendee, participants in the “State of American Energy” summit privately seethed about Trump’s demand that they risk their profits to support his Venezuela takeover. “For them, this was a major shift in the historical relationship between politicians and corporations, where the politician was pushing the agenda,” they told The Grayzone. “I found this very telling about who actually controls the country.”

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.

“Many people have asked oftentimes, how did you end up with this great partnership with Landman? I’ve often been asked if I actually write the show,” Sommers joked. “Of course that isn’t true, but the true story behind how we got involved with Landman, is that we were a little bit concerned about how Hollywood would portray the great industry that we serve every single day. So we decided to do some ads during season one. And afterwards, we figured out real fast that Landman was gonna be positive for the American oil and gas industry.”

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.