{"id":17703,"date":"2026-01-06T07:21:03","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T07:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=17703"},"modified":"2026-01-06T07:21:03","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T07:21:03","slug":"trumps-strike-on-venezuela-gives-the-u-s-30-of-the-worlds-oil-reserves-on-paper-and-a-100-billion-rebuilding-job-in-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=17703","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s strike on Venezuela gives the U.S. 30% of the world\u2019s oil reserves on paper and a $100 billion rebuilding job in reality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s plans to restore Venezuela\u2019s beleaguered oil industry faces a series of challenges that will cost U.S. oil companies many billions of dollars to overcome.<\/p>\n

\n

Over the weekend, U.S. forces arrested<\/a> Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on drug trafficking charges, with Trump claiming the U.S. would \u201crun\u201d the country and take over the country\u2019s nationalized oil reserves.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again. Won\u2019t happen,\u201d Trump said on Saturday, while explicitly endorsing the \u201cDonroe doctrine,\u201d a social media meme\/portmanteau that describes the retro-nostalgic version of imperial authority increasingly on display in his second term<\/a>. The Monroe Doctrine meets the Donald<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The move follows a series of deadly strikes on Venezuelan boats supposedly carrying drugs, attacks widely considered to be illegal. The United Nations Secretary General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, the body\u2019s top official, called Trump\u2019s ousting of Maduro a violation of the UN\u2019s charter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Home to the world\u2019s largest oil reserves, Venezuela reached its output peak in the 1970s, producing more than 3.5 million barrels of oil daily<\/a>, though production has significantly tapered off to about 1 million barrels daily. Analysts have high hopes that oil companies entering Venezuela can tap back into the country\u2019s black gold. JPMorgan predicted that with control of Venezuela\u2019s oil, the U.S. could hold 30% of the world\u2019s oil reserves<\/a>. Other analysts said the country could double or triple its current output<\/a>, returning it to its highs from 50 years ago, quite quickly.<\/p>\n

But experts warn that the path to dominance, at least as far as oil is concerned, will be an uphill battle following decades of mismanagement and sanctions. State-owned oil giant Petr\u00f3leos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) collapsed in the mid-2010s<\/a> following the loss of \u00a0foreign financial support, as well as skilled workers to maintain pipelines. In 2017, the first Trump administration escalated oil sanctions<\/a> on Venezuela, restricting the country\u2019s access to U.S. markets.<\/p>\n

Small war, big questions<\/h2>\n

According to Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, oil companies\u2019 efforts to grow production, such as rebuilding infrastructure, would take about a decade. She wrote in a note to investors on Saturday that according to oil executives, these efforts will cost $10 billion annually, bringing total investments over the next 10 years to about $100 billion.<\/p>\n

Part of those steep rebuilding costs are also a result of the need to extract and refine heavy crude oil, which makes up about 75% of Venezuela\u2019s reserve, most of which is in the Orinoco Belt. Venezuela\u2019s oil boom of yesteryear was also a result of light crude oil found in the oilfields of western Venezuela, which was easy to access and therefore were depleted quickly. While heavy crude oil is what is predominantly being drilled for today<\/a>, its viscous consistency and high levels of metals and sulfur mean extracting and refining this product is significantly more costly than its light crude counterpart.<\/p>\n

The mass undertaking to restore the Venezuelan oil industry to its peak means oil prices are unlikely to budge anytime soon, said Miguel Tinker Salas, a professor emeritus of history at Paloma College and author of The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela<\/em>. It\u2019s a hit to Trump\u2019s \u201cdrill baby, drill<\/a>\u201d vision and, according to the historian, the president\u2019s hope of gaining momentum ahead of the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe notion that Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil in the world\u2014303 billion barrels of oil [in reserve]\u2014may be a stimulant in trying to get the price of oil to drop for potentially his own electoral purposes,\u201d Tinker Salas told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cAlthough [Trump] is grossly mistaken if he thinks that Venezuelan oil comes online tomorrow and will affect prices of oil before the election.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several other analysts see more than a little bit of midterm maneuvering behind the U.S. strike on Venezuela, given the offyear rout<\/a> that Republicans suffered in 2025 and Trump\u2019s dismal poll ratings<\/a>. Macquarie\u2019s global analysts Viktor Shvets<\/a> and Kyle Liu<\/a> noted that their 2026 outlook included \u201cstart a small war\u201d as one policy the Republicans could pursue to avoid a \u201cmeltdown\u201d in the midterms. Maduro\u2019s capture is about oil and the Monroe Doctrine, they added, but it also strengthens the Republican Party\u2019s \u201ctough on crime and drugs\u201d image.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, UBS chief economist Paul Donovan argued in a Monday podcast<\/a> that perceptions of \u201caffordability\u201d seem to have shaped U.S. administration policy over the past few weeks. He noted two tariff decisions in particular: a delay on a furniture levy, and a cut on planned fees for tariffs on Italian pasta.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe weekend\u2019s action in Venezuela also raises fiscal questions,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt is not clear how, if at all, the US intends to \u2018run\u2019 Venezuela but military adventures carry a fiscal cost. Despite the noise of social media warriors, geopolitical considerations are likely to concern investors less.\u201d<\/p>\n

Risks of political instability<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The factors influencing U.S. oil companies go beyond just the infrastructure challenges plaguing the industry in Venezuela. According to RBC Capital Markets\u2019 Croft, increasing oil production will hinge on companies feeling confident about the safety of setting up shop in Venezuela. That begins with who will be leading the country moving forward.<\/p>\n

That individual will likely not be Nobel Peace Prize winner and opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado<\/a>, whom Trump said lacked support<\/a> to fill the role; nor will it be Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez, who ran against Maduro in the 2024 election, which was considered to be the fair winner of the election<\/a>. Gonz\u00e1lez is in a self-imposed exile in Spain. Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro\u2019s vice president, was sworn in as Venezuela\u2019s interim president on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t really know who\u2019s in charge, who is going to be running Venezuela,\u201d Croft told CNBC<\/a> on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The U.S. will also have to learn from its past efforts to build up authority in the oil-rich countries of Iraq and Libya<\/a>. Both endeavors included attempts to depose the countries\u2019 respective leaders that led to political collapse and civil unrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought Libya was going to be an easy turnaround, post-[former Libyan Prime Minister Muammar] Gaddafi,\u201d Croft said. \u201cSo the question is, What\u2019s our template for a rapid recovery of an oil sector that has suffered decades of decline and mismanagement?\u201d<\/p>\n

Tinker Salas argued that other factors, including an improvement in technology to extract low crude oil, could expedite production, but until there\u2019s evidence that companies can thrive in Venezuela, there will likely be few efforts to escalate drilling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think any large U.S. major company is going to want to invest without a series of guarantees, because you\u2019re talking about billions of dollars of investment,\u201d Tinker Salas said. \u201cThis is an investment for the long term, not for the short term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Macquarie\u2019s Shvets and Liu added an ominous warning for the long term of U.S. foreign policy, writing, that this is \u201canother nail in the coffin of [the] global rules-based order,\u201d marginalizing the UN \u201csimilar to the League of Nations circa 1930s.\u201d The League of Nations was the forerunner to the UN and is famous among historians for its formation after the wreckage of World War I and its almost immediate failure to prevent the rise of authoritarianism in the 1930s that gave way to World War II.<\/p>\n

This could also signal that the Church Committee rules may be \u201cobsolete,\u201d the Macquarie analysts wrote, referring to the regulations in place since 1975 to address abuses intelligence revealed during the Vietnam era. The CIA reportedly played a critical role in ensuring the success of this military action in Venezuela, after all.<\/p>\n

A strong Republican midterm showing would reinforce the \u201cunitary system of governance,\u201d on the one hand, but Macquarie argued that it would likely further erode the \u201cfew remaining semi-independent agencies (principally the Fed).\u201d Right on cue, a new Federal Reserve chairman is expected to be selected in the coming days<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump\u2019s plans to restore Venezuela\u2019s beleaguered oil industry faces a series of challenges that will cost U.S. oil companies many billions of dollars to overcome. Over the weekend, U.S. forces arrested Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on drug trafficking charges, with Trump claiming the U.S. would \u201crun\u201d the country and take over the country\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":925,"featured_media":17704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump\u2019s strike on Venezuela gives the U.S. 30% of the world\u2019s oil reserves on paper and a $100 billion rebuilding 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