U.S. President Donald Trump stated this Wednesday that Venezuela took away the oil rights of American companies and said he wants them back.

"Remember, they took all our energy rights away. They took all our oil not so long ago. We want it back. They took it illegally," the president declared to the press from Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington.

"We want it back. They took our oil rights away, even though there's a lot of oil there, as you know, they threw our companies out, and we want it back," he insisted.

These statements come one day after Trump announced he has ordered a total blockade on the entry and exit of oil tankers sanctioned by the U.S. government to and from Venezuela.

The president intensified pressure on Venezuela, a country dependent on the oil business, after seizing a vessel last week that had departed from the South American country and confiscating the crude oil it was transporting.

The Venezuelan oil industry was nationalized on January 1, 1976, during the first presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez, reserving the rights to explore and exploit the country's oil fields for the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).

In 2007, then-President Hugo Chávez modified the rules governing the oil industry to force transnational companies to become minority partners of PDVSA or withdraw from the country.

Despite tensions between Washington and Caracas, the U.S. company Chevron operates in Venezuela in partnership with PDVSA thanks to a license from the Treasury Department that exempts it from sanctions imposed on Venezuelan crude.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller asserted this Wednesday that the United States created Venezuela's oil industry and described its nationalization as "the biggest recorded theft of American wealth and property."

Until now, the Trump Administration had claimed that its pressure strategy on Venezuela aimed to combat drug trafficking, accusing the government of Nicolás Maduro of leading the so-called Cartel of the Suns.

U.S. military forces have destroyed about twenty vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific since September, allegedly loaded with drugs, extrajudicially killing at least 95 crew members.

Trump has promised to begin attacks "soon" against drug trafficking on Venezuelan territory, while Maduro has urged his citizens to join citizen militias to defend the country.