The meetings are crucial to the administration’s hopes of getting top U.S. oil companies back into the South American nation after its government, nearly two decades ago, took control of U.S.-led energy operations there.

The three biggest U.S. oil companies – Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), ConocoPhillips (COP.N) and Chevron (CVX.N) – have not yet had any conversations with the administration about Maduro’s ouster, according to four oil industry executives familiar with the matter, contradicting Trump’s statements over the weekend that he had already held meetings with “all” the U.S. oil companies, both before and since Maduro was seized.

“Nobody in those three companies has had conversations with the White House about operating in Venezuela, pre-removal or post-removal to this point,” one of the sources said on Monday.

The upcoming meetings will be crucial to the administration’s hopes to boost crude oil production and exports from Venezuela, a former OPEC nation which sits atop the world’s largest reserves and whose barrels can be refined by specially designed U.S. refineries. Achieving that goal will require years of work and billions of dollars of investment, analysts say.

It is unclear what executives will be attending the upcoming meetings, and whether oil companies will be attending individually or collectively.

The White House did not comment on the meetings but stated it believed the U.S. oil industry was ready to move into Venezuela.

“All of our oil companies are ready and willing to make big investments in Venezuela that will rebuild their oil infrastructure, which was destroyed by the illegitimate Maduro regime,” added White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.

Trump told NBC News the U.S. may subsidize oil companies to enable them to rebuild Venezuela’s energy infrastructure.

Asked if the administration had briefed any oil companies ahead of the military operation, Trump said, “No. But we’ve been talking to the concept of, ‘what if we did it?'”

“The oil companies were absolutely aware that we were thinking about doing something,” Trump told NBC News, adding, “But we didn’t tell them we were going to do it.”

He told NBC News it was “too soon” to say whether he had personally spoken to top executives at the three companies.

“I speak to everybody,” he added.

CBS News, citing an unnamed source, said executives from the three were expected to meet on Thursday with Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

One oil industry executive told Reuters the companies would be reluctant to talk about potential Venezuela operations in group settings with the White House, citing antitrust concerns that limit collective discussions among competitors about investment plans, timing and production levels.

The 15-member bloc met for an emergency meeting on Monday in New York City, where the Venezuelan pair were also due to face drug trafficking charges in a US federal court.

Venezuela’s ambassador to the UN, Samuel Moncada, condemned the US operation as “an illegitimate armed attack lacking any legal justification”, in remarks echoed by Cuba, Colombia and permanent UNSC members Russia and China.

“[The US] imposes the application of its laws outside its own territory and far from its coasts, where it has no jurisdiction, using assaults and the appropriation of assets,” Cuba’s ambassador, Ernesto Soberon Guzman, said, adding that such measures negatively affected Cuba.

Russia’s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said the US cannot “proclaim itself as some kind of a supreme judge, which alone bears the right to invade any country, to label culprits, to hand down and to enforce punishments irrespective of notions of international law, sovereignty and non-intervention”.

Notable critics at the emergency session included traditional US allies, Mexico and Denmark, both of whom Trump has separately threatened with military action over the past year.

Mexico’s ambassador, Hector Vasconcelos, said that the council had an “obligation to act decisively and without double standards” towards the US, and it was for “sovereign peoples to decide their destinies,” according to a UN readout.

His remarks come just days after Trump told reporters that “something will have to be done about Mexico” and its drug cartels, following Maduro’s abduction.

Denmark, a longstanding US security ally, said that “no state should seek to influence political outcomes in Venezuela through the use of threat of force or through other means inconsistent with international law.”

“The inviolability of borders is not up for negotiation,” Denmark’s ambassador, Christina Markus Lassen, told the council in an oblique reference to Trump’s threat that the US would annex Greenland, a self-governed Danish territory.

France, another permanent member of the UNSC, also criticised the US, marking a shift in tone from French President Emmanuel Macron’s initial remarks that Venezuelans “can only rejoice” following Maduro’s abduction.

“The military operation that has led to the capture of Maduro runs counter to the principle of peaceful dispute resolution and runs counter to the principle of non-use of force,” stated the French deputy ambassador, Jay Dharmadhikari.

Representatives from Latvia and the United Kingdom, another permanent UNSC member, focused on the conditions in Venezuela created by Maduro’s government.

Latvia’s ambassador, Sanita Pavļuta-Deslandes, said that Maduro’s conditions in Venezuela posed “a grave threat to the security of the region and the world”, citing mass repression, corruption, organised crime and drug trafficking.

The UK ambassador, James Kariuki, said that “Maduro’s claim to power was fraudulent”.

The US ambassador, Mike Waltz, characterised the abduction of Maduro and his wife as a “surgical law enforcement operation facilitated by the US military against two indicted fugitives of American justice”.

The White House defended its wave of air strikes on Venezuela, and in the waters near it, and Maduro’s abduction as necessary to protect US national security, amid unproven claims that Maduro backed “narcoterrorist” drug cartels.

“I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man. I am still president of my country,” Maduro, 63, said through an interpreter, before being cut off by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan federal court.

Maduro’s wife Cilia Flores also pleaded not guilty.

The next court date was set for March 17.

Dozens of protesters, both pro- and anti-Maduro, gathered outside the courthouse before the half-hour hearing.

Inside, as he stood shackled at the ankles and wearing orange and beige prison garb, Maduro declared he had been “kidnapped” and remained president of Venezuela. He listened to an interpreter through headphones as Hellerstein summarized the charges.

Maduro is accused of overseeing a cocaine-trafficking network with international drug cartels and faces four criminal counts: narco-terrorism, cocaine importation conspiracy and possession of machine guns and destructive devices.

Maduro has long denied the allegations, saying they were a mask for imperialist designs on Venezuela’s rich oil reserves.

Maduro’s defense lawyer Barry Pollack stated that he anticipated voluminous and complex litigation over what he called his client’s “military abduction.”

Asked by Reuters about the report, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said, “The President and his national security team are making realistic decisions to finally ensure Venezuela aligns with the interests of the United States.”

While many anti-Maduro activists had assumed this would be their moment, Trump appeared to have sidelined the Venezuelan opposition for now. Instead, he has suggested Rodriguez was willing to work with Washington.

Leavitt told Fox News that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in “constant correspondence” with the remaining Maduro government, and that Washington maintained “leverage” over Caracas.

In Caracas, senior officials from Maduro’s 13-year-old government remained in charge of the South American oil producer of 30 million people, alternating between angry defiance and possible cooperation with the Trump administration.

The intelligence assessment concluded that Rodriguez was among the few Venezuelan leaders capable of maintaining order, along with the interior and defense ministers, in a government dominated by ideological opponents of the U.S., the Wall Street Journal added.