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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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President Donald Trump said that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela and “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure after the capture of strongman Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on Saturday morning.
Venezuela’s oil reserves, believed to be the world’s largest, and its crude output will be at the center of the country’s future and economic recovery after the crisis it has been plunged into in the past decade by the Maduro’s regime.
Experts, however, are skeptical about the U.S. capacity to turbocharge a sector that has long been neglected in Venezuela—especially if instability in the country follows Maduro’s arrest. Most believe that Trump’s plan is facing major hurdles, and it is unlikely to impact oil prices any time soon.
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Why It Matters
Maduro and his wife are now facing criminal charges in the U.S. for narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine-importation conspiracy and weapons charges. According to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the couple “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”
But the future of the country they were removed from is still uncertain, and the path to recovery is likely long and difficult. Some critics are accusing the Trump administration of having secondary goals for ousting Maduro, especially considering that Venezuela has not been a major producer of cocaine since the 2010s and does not produce fentanyl—like taking over its oil reserves.
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Trump has not masked his intentions for the country’s oil either. “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” the president said during a news conference on Saturday.
The money made through this wealth, he said, would go “to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country.”
What To Know
While Venezuela has roughly 303 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, or 17 percent of the world’s total, its infrastructure is in pretty poor conditions after years of neglect, U.S. sanctions, and corruption, and the country has been pumping a fraction of its potential production in recent years.
At the moment, Venezuela’s output is about 1 million barrels a day, way less than the more than 13 million barrels of crude produced daily in the U.S.
Trump has acknowledged this at a news conference held ahead of Maduro’s arrival in New York on Saturday night. “The oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust for a long period of time,” he said.
“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, and start making money for the country,” he added.
But according to experts and as reporterd by The Guardian, it might take years and billions of dollars for this infrastructure to be fixed and taken up to speed.
“While many are reporting Venezuela’s oil infrastructure was unharmed by U.S. military actions, it has been decaying for many many years and will take time to rebuild,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, wrote on X on Saturday.
“Oil infrastructure has been decimated and output changes will be limited for now,” he added.
America’s biggest oil companies, as of yet, have not committed to Trump’s plan, but potential investors are Exxon Mobil and Texas-headquartered ConocoPhillips. In a statement to The Guardian, ConocoPhillips said, “it would be premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments.”
A spokesperson for Chevron said: “Chevron remains focused on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets. We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.”
Chevron is the only major U.S. oil company still operating in Venezuela, having accepted new terms stated by Maduro in 2007, when he seized control of operations that had remained under private control after the nationalization of the country’s oil industry some 50 years ago.
When it comes to the impact of the latest developments on oil prices and the global market, experts are skeptical of sudden changes.
De Haan said in a post on X that he was not expecting a massive shift in short-term output by Venezuela, though in the long-term, the country could see “large improvement” in oil output.
“Thus, short-term oil prices may be slightly influenced by Venezuela’s developments, while long-term could see significant ramp up in exports in time as [the] infrastructure [is] rebuilt, depending on leadership and outside investment,” he added.
Newsweek contacted Exxon, CoconoPhillips and Chevron for comment by email on Sunday.
What People Are Saying
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, wrote on X: “Bottom line, on VZ [Venezuela], strictly from an oil lens: not expecting a major impact to oil prices rn [right now]- this doesn’t change much in the short term as VZ’s output has been hamstrung for years, but could in the years ahead depending on many factors like regime stability, etc., eventually lead to a resurgence in VZ’s oil output & could have a larger impact on prices.”
Francisco Monaldi, an expert in Latin American energy policy at Rice University, told The Atlantic: “Venezuela could produce 4 million barrels instead of the 1 million barrels it produces per day, but it would take maybe a little bit less than a decade and $100 billion in total over that period to get it to 4 million barrels. Very few countries can do something like that.”
Equity fund manager and real estate investor Grant Cardone wrote on X: “U.S. Oil prices should be sub $50 a barrel by Monday opening. Venezuela holds the LARGEST oil reserves in the world, at 300+ billion barrels. The U.S. now controls the largest oil reserve in the world.”
Peter McNally, global lead analyst at Third Bridge, said in a statement reported by The Guardian: “Can Venezuela’s oil output recover? Our experts tell us the answer is yes but it will take tens of billions of dollars in investment and at least a decade of western oil majors committing to the country.”
Journalist and political economist Ben Norton wrote on X: “After bombing Venezuela and abducting President Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump said the U.S. government is ‘going to run the country’ until there is a ‘transition’ to pro-U.S. leadership.
“He boasted that ‘very large’ U.S. corporations will exploit its oil. This is blatant colonialism.”
State Rep. James Talarico (D-TX) wrote on X: “Last year, Trump promised American oil executives ‘a great deal’ if they donated $1 billion to his campaign. Today, he gave them Venezuela — home to the largest oil reserves in the world. This new war is not only illegal and reckless; it is deeply corrupt.”
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) said on X: “Trump can’t manage the American economy and now he says he’ll run Venezuela and its oil infrastructure? We’ve seen what happens when we destabilize countries on behalf of American fossil fuel CEOs—they profit, service members die, and regions collapse. We cannot let this stand.”
What Happens Next
De Haan said that outside investment would be “critical” to accelerating any increase in Venezuela’s oil output. At the moment, a U.S. embargo on all Venezuelan oil is still in place, according to Trump.
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