Mother Jones illustration; Alex Brandon/AP, Leslie Mazoch/AP
This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
President Donald Trump has made it clear: His vision for Venezuela’s future involves the US profiting from its oil.
“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 badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure,” the president told reporters at a news conference Saturday, following the shocking capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
But experts caution that a number of realities—including international oil prices and longer-term questions of stability in the country—are likely to make this oil revolution much harder to execute than Trump seems to think.
Trump seems to view the situation almost like “a Settlers of Catan board—you kidnap the president of Venezuela and, ipso facto, you now control all the oil.”
“The disconnect between the Trump administration and what’s really going on in the oil world, and what American companies want, is huge,” says Lorne Stockman, an analyst with Oil Change International, a clean energy and fossil fuels research and advocacy organization.
Venezuela sits on some of the largest oil reserves in the world. But production of oil there has plummeted since the mid 1990s, after President Hugo Chávez nationalized much of the industry. The country was producing just 1.3 million barrels of oil each day in 2018, down from a high of more than 3 million barrels each day in the late 1990s. (The US, the top producer of crude oil in the world, produced an average of 21.7 million barrels each day in 2023.) Sanctions placed on Venezuela during the first Trump administration, meanwhile, have driven production even further down.
Trump has repeatedly implied that freeing up all that oil and increasing production would be a boon for the oil and gas industry—and that he expects American oil companies to take the lead. This kind of thinking—a natural offshoot of his “drill, baby, drill” philosophy—is typical for the president. One of Trump’s main critiques of the Iraq war, which he first voiced years before he ran for office, was that the US did not “take the oil” from the region to “reimburse ourselves” for the war.
The president views energy geopolitics “almost like the world is a Settlers of Catan board—you kidnap the president of Venezuela and, ipso facto, you now control all the oil,” says Rory Johnston, a Canadian oil market researcher. “I do think he legitimately, to a degree, believes that. It’s not true, but I think that’s an important frame for how he’s justifying and driving the momentum of his policy.”
Some Trump administration policies that were intended to boost American oil and gas have actually hurt the industry. US oil producers have repeatedly voiced concerns about how tariffs and a volatile market have contributed to a dramatic decline in global oil prices, which fell 20 percent in 2025—the biggest losses since 2020.
Oil and gas companies, like most big industries with a lot of capital invested in infrastructure, value long-term political and financial stability. Any more big, unpredictable shakeups—in supply, regulatory environments, tariffs, or otherwise—could not come at a worse time for American oil.
“Right now the oil market’s somewhat oversupplied,” Stockman says. “That’s hurting American companies. The last thing they want is for a massive oil reserve to suddenly be opened up.”
A number of both short- and long-term decisions could affect how the US invasion of Venezuela plays out for American oil. First there’s the question of what happens to all the oil Venezuela is currently sitting on. Over the past few months, the administration has significantly ramped up sanctions and blockades on Venezuela, creating a massive glut of oil that hasn’t been able to find its way out of the country.
If Trump decides to totally lift sanctions on Venezuela, that surplus could enter the wider market. The most likely buyers are US oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, which are close by and equipped to handle the type of oil produced in Venezuela. This could create investment opportunities for oil companies based there.
When it comes to developing even more of Venezuela’s oil capacity, things get trickier. While it’s tempting to draw direct lines between the Iraq invasion and Trump’s move against Maduro, the economic conditions for oil, both in the US and abroad, are much different than they were in 2002. Oil supply was tight when the US invaded Iraq, and the shale revolution—which flooded the market with cheap fracked gas and oil from American producers—was still several years away. Now, with oil prices sitting almost as low as they were in the pandemic, most big producers are not drilling with abandon, but picking and choosing where they spend their money. Renewable energy, meanwhile, has become astronomically cheaper than it was in the early 2000s.
“Lots of corruption, poor governance, nationalization… [It’s] gonna take time for companies to trust again.”
“We are entering a world where oil demand growth is slowing,” Stockman says. “Despite what the Trump administration wants, we are in the midst of a transition. No matter where you believe the peak is, whether it’s 2030 or beyond, the peak is coming.”
It’s not clear if restarting production in Venezuela will see a guaranteed return on investment for many years. Venezuela’s oil reserves are extra-heavy, requiring extra processing—and cost—to make the oil light enough for transport. Meanwhile, the infrastructure used to produce oil in Venezuela is falling apart after decades of disrepair and neglect. Significantly ramping up production in these circumstances, experts say, will likely take years and tens of millions of dollars.
Some major American companies seem poised to profit more immediately from a regime change. Chevron, the only company still operating in Venezuela, could have enough of a foothold to more quickly expand production. ExxonMobil, meanwhile, has poured money into oil fields in nearby Guyana; American control in Venezuela could be helpful in stabilizing those investments over the long term.
But as a whole, the industry has shown initial hesitation to a possibly open playing field in Venezuela. Politico reported Saturday that the Trump administration has told oil companies that it expects them to pour money into the country—but industry has been cautious. “The infrastructure currently there is so dilapidated that no one at these companies can adequately assess what is needed to make it operable,” an energy insider told Politico.
And oil reserves in a specific region don’t guarantee a stable environment for a massive influx of investment cash—and American oil employees. The New York Times reported Saturday that the Trump administration has for weeks eyed Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez to replace Maduro, based partly on her management of the oil industry since she was named the nation’s oil minister in 2020. But it’s far from clear if this administration will be able to control a regime change in a way that creates a stable investing environment for big oil companies for the next few decades.
That initial plan appears to be unraveling already. On Saturday, Rodríguez, who has been sworn in as Venezuela’s interim leader, denounced US actions there and said that Maduro is the country’s “only president.” Sunday morning, US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on ABC’s This Week that Rodríguez is not the “legitimate” president of Venezuela. “Ultimately,” he said, “legitimacy for their system of government will come about through a period of transition and real elections, which they have not had.”
“There’s a lot of history, and I mean that in, like, a capital H kind of weight to it, History,” says Johnston. “Lots of corruption, poor governance, nationalization…That is gonna take time for companies to trust again if they don’t have to. Step one is: Who is now president of Venezuela? We have no idea at this point.”
Still, there’s a chance some companies may choose to play ball in the short term. Investors have learned that acceding to Trump’s interests can present financial and regulatory wins, even when the market is not necessarily behind those decisions; companies that don’t follow along, by contrast, could face consequences. On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported that a group of hedge fund officials and asset managers were already planning a trip to Venezuela to explore investment opportunities, including ones in energy.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of that,” Johnston says. “Is that window dressing for investments, or is that window dressing for the White House? I think there’s gonna be a lot of people wanting to please Trump and say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s our oil industry now.’”
