It’s all about oil and world peace, apparently; US the oil industry consutant warmonger actually said that.
The full article is on the link, along with a few embedded video clips
ED
Max Blumenthal·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.”