FLASH
Shkruar nga Paul Kelso
Venezuelan oil is a very heavy crude oil, used for the production of diesel, jet fuel, asphalt, and as a feedstock in petrochemicals...
After the US ousted Nicolas Maduro in an unprecedented intervention, Donald Trump said American companies would spend billions to reverse Venezuela's plummeting oil production. But changing course will take time.
Donald Trump has been clear that Venezuela's vast oil reserves, and the commercial opportunity they represent for American oil companies, were a key motive for the removal of President Nicolas Maduro.
Venezuela has the largest reserves on earth, with an estimated 300 billion barrels of untapped oil, which equates to 17% of global reserves, and more than Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and more than three times the reserves in the United States.
Most of Venezuela's oil is located in the central Orinoco belt, south of the Orinoco River, in oil fields covering about 50,000 square km, which may be the largest hydrocarbon deposit on the planet.
And it's not just the quantity of oil that matters, but also its type. Venezuelan oil is a very heavy crude oil, used to produce diesel, jet fuel, asphalt and as a feedstock in petrochemicals.
Since it is very viscous, thick, and sticky, it is more complex to extract and requires refining, but perhaps most importantly, while the US does not have large reserves of this type of crude oil, it does have refineries that can manage it.
Despite its massive reserves, Venezuelan production is relatively small and has been declining for decades.
In the 1960s and 1970s, when, as elsewhere in Latin America and the Middle East, American and British oil companies controlled the industry, production peaked at around 3.5 million barrels per day, about 7% of global production.
After the election of Hugo Chavez and the nationalization of the industry, production fell, falling further under his successor Nicolas Maduro and falling sharply after the imposition of sanctions in 2019.
Today, Venezuela produces less than a million barrels a day, almost all of which is exported to China, except as repayment for historic loans, and to the United States, which has granted oil giant Chevron a license to operate in the country.
Donald Trump says US oil companies will spend billions to reverse this decline, but changing course will take time.
Venezuela's oil infrastructure has declined due to a lack of investment, and there has been a brain drain of expertise from the domestic industry under Maduro.
Consultants Wood Mackenzie estimate that every additional half a million barrels of additional production will require $15-20 billion in investment.
To understand how long it might take to significantly increase production, we can look back at an earlier, albeit much larger, episode of American adventurism - the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Since the US-led invasion in 2003, Iraqi production has tripled from about 1.5 million barrels a day to almost 4.5 million, but that has taken 20 years and the wider conflict came at a huge cost to regional stability.
The most immediate question is what impact the regime change in Venezuela will have on the price of oil when markets reopen this week.
Given the uncertainty about who is really in charge in Caracas, some instability would not be a surprise, but the US seizure of Venezuelan tankers before Christmas had limited impact.
Oil prices have been in decline for a year, falling by about 20% in 2025 as global demand has waned as economies have slowed, leading to an oversupply. It is likely that the prospect of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine will have more of an impact on prices than the promise of more crude from Venezuela in the coming decades.
Whatever happens to markets in the short term, the broader question of whether American involvement in the oil trade constitutes a plundering of colonial assets, or will ultimately benefit the Venezuelan people, will take longer to resolve./ SkyNews
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