Top Atlanta CEO: U.S. action in Venezuela ‘massive pivot’ in energy
Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO and founder of Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange and a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump, weighed in Monday on the U.S. involvement in Venezuela and what it could mean for energy prices.
The comments come a little over a week after the U.S. military and law enforcement raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and left dozens of people in the South American country dead.
The White House is now trying to woo American oil executives to Venezuela and is framing the effort to “run” the country in economic terms. Trump has seized tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, has said the U.S. is taking over the sales of 30 million to 50 million barrels of previously sanctioned Venezuelan crude and plans to control sales worldwide indefinitely.
One of the ways global crude oil is sold is through exchanges. Sprecher launched Intercontinental Exchange in 2000, which now owns a slew of stock and commodity exchanges around the world — including for oil and natural gas — and the 233-year-old New York Stock Exchange. He is also married to Kelly Loeffler, the former Republican Georgia senator who now leads the U.S. Small Business Administration.
On Monday, Sprecher, at the Rotary Club of Atlanta, was in a conversation on stage with Raphael Bostic, the outgoing president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
As one of his opening questions, Bostic asked Sprecher about stressors on energy markets and how to work toward a future that is not in peril, though he did not specifically mention Venezuela.
In the tariff debate in the U.S. over the last year, “it’s very much about putting tariffs on third parties, but underneath that, there’s really a desire by the U.S. government … to fix the balance of payments,” Sprecher said. “The easiest way to do that is to have these foreign entities buy U.S. energy and so we become, as a country, a big export nation.”
“Now, potentially, the rewiring of Venezuela and keeping that in our hemisphere and denying it from China has completely changed the dynamics of where are we going to get our energy and how much we’re going to pay for it. And I don’t know that we know the answer to that yet, but we’re kind of in the middle of this massive pivot that is a supply chain change, much like what happened during COVID,” Sprecher said.
While Bostic and Sprecher discussed a wide range of topics, including Venezuela, artificial intelligence, prediction markets and cryptocurrency, they did not discuss the Trump administration’s criminal investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and its impact on markets.
However, Sprecher did share an inside look at the Trump administration’s June bombing of Iranian nuclear sites, saying officials were monitoring Polymarket, a prediction platform where users can bet and sell shares on potential outcomes to global events. Last fall, Intercontinental Exchange announced it was investing up to $2 billion in the platform.
“My understanding from the White House is that when we flew the mission over to Iran to bomb the nuclear facilities, they had Polymarket up in the War Room,” he said. “Why? Because that was a 20-hour flight, and they were not betting on it, but they wanted to see if anything leaked, it would probably show up there.”
About the Author
Mirtha Donastorg is a reporter on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s business team focusing on Black wealth, entrepreneurship, and minority-owned businesses as well as innovation at Atlanta’s HBCUs.
