President Donald Trump was clear: his vision for The future of Venezuela implies that the United States is profiting from its oil.
“We’re going to ask our very large American oil companies – the largest in the world – to step in, spend billions of dollars, repair the badly damaged infrastructure, the oil infrastructure,” the president told reporters at a news conference Saturday, following the attack. Shocking capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
But experts warn that a number of realities – including international oil prices and questions of long-term stability at home – will likely make this oil revolution much more difficult to implement than Trump seems to think.
“The disconnect between the Trump administration and what’s actually happening in the oil world and what American companies want is huge,” says Lorne Stockman, an analyst at Oil Change International, a clean energy and fossil fuel research and advocacy organization.
Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world. But oil production there has fallen since the mid-1990s, after President Hugo Chávez nationalized much of the industry. The country was just produce 1.3 million barrels of oil per day in 2018, compared to more than 3 million barrels per day in the late 1990s. (The United States, the world’s largest crude oil producer, produced on average 21.7 million barrels every day in 2023.) Meanwhile, sanctions imposed on Venezuela under the first Trump administration have caused production to decline even further.
Trump has repeatedly suggested that releasing all that oil and boosting production would be a boon for the oil and gas industry — and that he expects U.S. oil companies to take the lead. This kind of thinking – a natural outgrowth of his “drill, baby, drill” philosophy – is typical of the president. One of the Trumps hand reviews One of the main reasons for the Iraq War, which he first expressed years before running for office, was that the United States had not “taken the oil” from the region to “repay itself” for the war.
The president views energy geopolitics “almost as if the world were a board of directors of the settlers of Catan: you kidnap the president of Venezuela and, ipso facto, you now control all the oil,” says Rory Johnston, a Canadian oil market researcher. “I think he legitimately believes that, to a certain extent. It’s not true, but I think it’s an important framework in how he justifies and builds momentum for his policies.”
Some Trump administration policies that were intended to boost U.S. oil and gas actually hurt the industry. U.S. oil producers have repeatedly expressed concerns about how customs tariffs and volatile market contributed to a dramatic decline in global oil prices, which fell by 20% in 2025 – the biggest losses since 2020. Oil and gas companies, like most large industries that invest a lot of capital in infrastructure, value long-term political and financial stability. Other major and unpredictable upheavals – in supply, regulatory environmentstariffs or others – could not come at a worse time for American oil.
“Right now, the oil market is somewhat oversupplied,” Stockman says. “This hurts American businesses. The last thing they want is for a huge oil reserve to suddenly become available.”
A number of short- and long-term decisions could impact how the American invasion of Venezuela plays for American oil. First there is the question of what will happen to all the oil Venezuela currently relies on. In recent months, the administration has significantly increased sanctions and blockades against Venezuela, creating a massive glut of oil that has been unable to move out of the country.
If Trump decides to fully lift sanctions on Venezuela, this surplus could enter the broader market. The most likely buyers are U.S. oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, located nearby and equipped to process the type of oil produced in Venezuela. This could create investment opportunities for oil companies based there.
When it comes to further developing Venezuela’s oil capacity, things get complicated. Although it is tempting to draw direct lines between the invasion of Iraq and Trump’s decision against Maduro, the economic conditions for oil, both in the United States and abroad, are very different from what they were in 2002. Oil supplies were tight when the United States invaded Iraq, and the shale revolution — which flooded the market with cheap fracked gas and oil from American producers — was still several years away. Today, with oil prices almost as low as they were during the pandemic, most big producers aren’t drilling with abandon, but choosing where they spend their money. Renewable energy, meanwhile, has become astronomically cheaper than it was in the early 2000s.
“We are entering a world where oil demand growth is slowing,” Stockman says. “Despite what the Trump administration wants, we are in the middle of a transition. No matter where you think the peak will be, whether it’s 2030 or beyond, the peak is coming.”
It is unclear whether resuming production in Venezuela will result in a guaranteed return on investment for many years. Venezuela’s oil reserves are extremely heavy, requiring additional processing (and costs) to make the oil light enough for transportation. Meanwhile, the infrastructure used to produce oil in Venezuela is crumbling after decades of disrepair and neglect. A significant increase in production under these circumstances will likely take years and tens of millions of dollars, experts say.
Some large American companies appear poised to benefit more immediately from a regime change. Chevron, the only company still operating in Venezuela, could have enough grounding to increase production more quickly. ExxonMobil, for its part, has invested money in the oil fields of neighboring Guyana; U.S. control in Venezuela could help stabilize these investments in the long term. But overall, the industry showed initial hesitancy about a possible opening of the playing field in Venezuela. Politico reported Saturday that the Trump administration had told the oil companies that she expects them to pump money into the country – but the industry has been cautious.
“The current infrastructure is so dilapidated that no one at these companies can adequately assess what is needed to make it operational,” an energy industry insider told Politico.
And oil reserves in a specific region do not guarantee a stable environment for a massive influx of investment cash – and American oil employees. The New York Times reported As of Saturday, the Trump administration has been considering Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez for weeks to replace Maduro, in part due to her handling of the oil industry since she was named the country’s oil minister in 2020. But it is far from clear whether this administration will be able to control a regime change in a way that creates a stable investment environment for big oil companies for the coming decades.
This initial plan already seems to be falling apart. On Saturday, Rodríguez, who was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim leader, denounced U.S. actions in that country and said that Maduro is the “only president” of the country. On Sunday morning, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on ABC This week that Rodríguez is not the “legitimate” president of Venezuela. “In the end”, he said“the legitimacy of their system of government will come through a period of transition and real elections, which they did not have.”
“There’s a lot of history, and I mean that with, like, capital weight, History,” Johnston says. “Lots of corruption, bad governance, nationalizations… It will take time for companies to regain their trust if they don’t have to. The first step is: who is now president of Venezuela? We have no idea at this point.”
It is nevertheless possible that some companies choose to play the game in the short term. Investors have learned that adhering to Trump’s interests can lead to financial and regulatory gains, even when the market is not necessarily behind those decisions; On the other hand, companies that do not follow this approach could suffer the consequences. On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a group of hedge fund executives and asset managers were already in the process of plan a trip to Venezuela explore investment opportunities, particularly in the energy sector.
“I think there will be a lot,” Johnston says. “Is this a front for investments, or is this a front for the White House? I think there will be a lot of people who want to please Trump and say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s our oil industry now.'”