Repsol director praises Trump and uses the term “Gulf of America”

Josu Jon Imaz, CEO of the Spanish oil company Repsol, referred to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” during a meeting that representatives of energy companies had with the US president, Donald Trump, last Thursday. The statement generated criticism among political figures.

Trump has on several occasions proposed changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” arguing that that part of the ocean is an integral asset of the United States, but faces legal obstacles, including approval from Mexico and Cuba.

“We are a Spanish company, but we are completely committed to investing here, in the United States. In the last 15 years we have invested 21 billion dollars in the oil and gas industry, in Pennsylvania, in the Gulf of America in Texas and in Alaska,” were the words of Josu Jon Imaz.

At the meeting at the White House, Trump was with more than 20 directors of the world’s largest oil companies, in which he called on them to invest around 100 billion dollars in Venezuela after the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro.

The manager thanked Trump “for opening the door to a better Venezuela”; He recalled that in the South American country the firm is present with its business partner, the Italian Eni, to produce gas, and said he was ready “to invest more in Venezuela.”

He noted that in the South American country the energy company produces 45 thousand barrels per day “and we are ready to triple this figure in the next three years.”

In 2020, Repsol was accused by then-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador of having received rigged public contracts during the six-year term of PAN member Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, for which he proposed an audit of the company.

“During the government of President Felipe Calderón, Repsol, a Spanish company, was his favorite contractor. If a technical-administrative audit is carried out, it would be found that they looted the public treasury,” said the former president in a morning conference at the end of July 2020.

The Repsol advisor’s statements to Trump were questioned. “Josu Jon Imaz, CEO of Repsol and former leader of the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party), thanks Trump for his terrorist attack in Venezuela, asks for permission to multiply oil production in the country by three and calls the Gulf of Mexico ‘Gulf of America’. The vassals licking the boots of their imperial master,” Pablo Echenique, physicist and former member of the European Parliament, published on the social network X.