HAMILTON, Canada

President Donald Trump said Saturday that "very large" US oil companies would be spending "billions of dollars" to fix Venezuela's "badly broken" oil infrastructure.

"We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars fix the broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country," Trump told a news conference in the US state of Florida flanked by senior Cabinet officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

His remarks came after the US carried out a "large-scale strike" on Venezuela, with President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores also "captured and flown out" of the country, according to Trump.

Saying that the US "built Venezuela's oil industry with American talent, drive and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us," Trump pledged to "rebuild the oil infrastructure."

"It'll be paid for by the oil companies directly; they will be reimbursed for what they're doing," he added.

Asked about the cost of running Venezuela, he said: "It won't cost us anything, because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial."

"So it's not going to cost us anything," he said.