Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific AmericanIt is Science quickly, My name is Kendra Pierre-Louis, I’m replacing Rachel Feltman.
Over the past few weeks, oil, particularly Venezuelan oil, has been making headlines.
It began late on Jan. 2, when President Donald Trump ordered U.S. military forces to enter Venezuela and capture the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, which they did early the next morning. Last week, the country’s interior minister said the action killed 100 people.
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In the weeks since, President Trump has made clear that at least part of his motivation for the operation was the country’s oil fields, which are home to an estimated 303 billion barrels of oil reserves, more oil than Saudi Arabia or any other country in the world.
To dig deeper, we spoke with Amy Westervelt, climate journalist and managing editor of the Multimedia Climate Reporting Project. Drilled. We spoke with Amy about why Venezuela has so much oil, the history of the country’s oil industry, and how this obsession with oil impacts climate change.
Thank you for joining us.
Amy Westervelt: Thank you for inviting me.
Pierre-Louis: You may know more about South American oil than any other climate journalist I’ve met. What interested you?
Westervelt: In fact, it was Guyana that attracted me [Laughs] interested in this. So I received this press release from Exxon[Mobil] in, I mean, 2020, which said that Guyana was going to become its most productive basin within five to ten years, that it would even surpass the Permian Basin in Texas. And I wondered, “How did they get so big so fast?” »
And shortly thereafter, I received press releases from a lawyer who had filed several complaints in Guyana to try to stop the offshore project and who claimed that part of the reason they had acted so quickly was because they had ignored various environmental regulations.
So these two things happened in the same week, and I was like, “Oh, this is really interesting, and I haven’t really seen much of this.” “So I started working with a journalist in Guyana, and then I went back and forth myself to report on this new oil industry that was being created in, you know, 2020.
Pierre-Louis: Okay, we’ll go back to Guyana, I promise.
Westervelt: [Laughs.]
Pierre-Louis: But before we get there…
Westervelt: Yeah.
Pierre-Louis: As you know, the Trump administration recently invaded Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolas Maduro, under allegations of drug trafficking. Your recent article in Drilled mentions that access to the region’s oil is an important motivator for what is happening there. And focusing mainly on Venezuela, at the moment, Venezuela has a lot of oil, like a estimated at 303 billion barrels of oilcompared to the United States, which has around 46 billion barrels. A very fundamental question: for example, why does Venezuela and this region have so much oil?
Westervelt: Well, they have the Orinoco Basin, which is the largest oil reserve in the world, basically [Laughs]Venezuela therefore has the most oil in the world. But it’s not good oil; it’s heavy crude. So it’s a bit comparable to tar sands oil in Canada.
Pierre-Louis: So what does that mean? Because I think for most people…
Westervelt: RIGHT.
Pierre-Louis: We don’t really think about the quality of the oil. We don’t see oil very often. If we have a vision of what oil is, it’s like The Beverly Hillbillies …
Westervelt: [Laughs.] Yes.
Pierre-Louis: And it flows from the ground. [Laughs.] So what do oil grades actually mean?
Westervelt: Venezuelan oil is therefore a heavy crude, which means it contains a lot of substances, which means it is more expensive to refine, which reduces the margins of oil companies. And it is also less favorable for many different engine types and usage types, which means it gets a lower price in the market.
So as the price of oil has gone down, the price of heavy crude has gone down even more, because what we generally think of as the price per barrel is sweet crude, you know? [Laughs.] It’s like it’s the good stuff. So whatever number is lower, heavy crude will be even lower than that. And then on top of that, Venezuelan oil has been subject to all these sanctions. Trump was one of them, both in his first term and more recently.
So, you know, because I feel like the question is always like, “Why Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, right?” [Laughs]like, what if there’s that much oil? And there are several reasons, one of which is, yes, the quality of the oil, the distance that separates it from the markets and then the fact that there are sanctions on those markets.
More and more people are more interested in things that burn less hotly. This is also partly due to environmental regulations.
But what’s more, they knew they had this oil for a long time. I mean, some will say the Spanish knew it when they were colonizing Venezuela and all that, but they sure have developed it since World War I, when everyone was looking for more oil because it was the first kind of big war fueled by fossil fuels.
And American companies have been there from the jump. So there’s this strange thing that happens in a lot of situations where American oil companies feel this attachment to the oil industry there. [Laughs] and that, like the right to oil which is there too.
But Venezuela started trying to nationalize its oil industry in the ’30s and ’40s. We found documents from this old PR guy who was sent by Standard Oil to try to stop this from happening in the ’40s and successfully. And a lot of that was labor and, you know, the fact that workers were annoyed, you know, being poorly paid and poorly treated by these foreign companies that were making so much money from Venezuelan oil. So, you know, at that time, in the ’40s, it was sort of about dealing with the unions, getting rid of the unions, putting contracts in place that, you know, would prevent this from happening.
But they could only contain it for a while, and in 1976 Venezuela nationalized the oil, but they allowed many joint partnerships, so it didn’t really affect US oil companies [Laughs]-until [then-Venezuelan President Hugo] Chávez said in 2007: “Okay, that’s enough. You can be here, but the majority shareholder in any oil project in Venezuela has to be the state oil company. And if you don’t like that, you can walk out.” And Exxon and ConocoPhillips refused.
So they left and he seized their possessions. Chevron has remained, like, a minority shareholder in some of the projects there, but it’s had, you know, ups and downs over the last few years because of U.S. sanctions as well, so Chevron has kind of faltered. But when Exxon was kicked out, they already had this backup plan in mind because they had been camped on an exploratory permit in Guyana since the late 90s.
Pierre-Louis: Yes, and from what I understand, much of the infrastructure that Venezuela had is now quite old. And so, to summarize the country’s situation a little bit: Venezuela has some oil, but a lot of it isn’t that big, and it would take significant investment in infrastructure to really get it back into production to the extent that we seem to be talking about, and it wouldn’t necessarily be expensive.
Westervelt: To the tune of tens of billions of dollars. This is not a small amount of money we are talking about here.
Pierre-Louis: And yet, just across the border is Guyana, which has a ton of light, sweet crude. Can you talk about the conflict that has existed between Venezuela and Guyana for several years?
Westervelt: Yes, so this conflict actually dates back to the late 1800s. So Venezuela and Guyana fought over this area called Essequibo. Venezuela has long claimed that it is a Venezuelan state. In the late 1890s — I think it’s 1899 — there was an international arbitration ruling on this dispute that said, “No, this is where the border is. Essequibo is in Guyana. “And that, you know, went pretty well for a while.
In the early 1960s, this conflict resurfaced. Some people think, in fact, that it was also about oil at the time, because there had been some early exploration and some thought there might have been oil off the coast. And at that time, there was another treaty that was signed called the Treaty of Geneva. [Agreement]and it was signed by the United Kingdom, Venezuela and British Guiana, which Guyana was at the time because it had not been given…
Pierre-Louis: Independence.
Westervelt: Independence again, exactly. So, it was signed, made official in 1966, and then, actually, a few months later, Guyana was sort of added to it. They were made independent, so it’s like, “Oh, now it’s you guys,” but they never really accepted any of that.
So, in 2015, Exxon announced that it had discovered this enormous oil reserve off the coast of Guyana. And immediately, Maduro started saying, “You know, actually, this is Venezuela. “I talked to some petroleum engineers in Guyana, and some of them actually think that part of the reason Venezuela was concerned about the oil in Guyana was also that they thought the reservoirs were connected, and so they were concerned that if the oil was withdrawn, like here, that would also reduce production in Venezuela.
Anyway, this whole feud has started again since 2015. And especially in the last two years, Maduro has started to be very aggressive about this. And that’s the piece that I think has been missed by a lot of the media coverage around Venezuela is that, you know, he’s started sending navy ships to patrol that area.
[Laughs.] In December 2023, Maduro has just declared once again that Essequibo is a Venezuelan state. He held a referendum where the Venezuelan people voted and, you know, the electoral system in Venezuela has come under scrutiny for a variety of reasons. [Laughs] for a long time, but he claims that the Venezuelan readers overwhelmingly agreed that it was part of Venezuela. And then, in January 2025, he announced that there would be elections for the governor of this Venezuelan state.
As this occurs, Guyana has now filed a complaint with the International Court of Justice asking it to rule on the matter. They filed this claim in 2018. Progress has been very slow. But until now, the ruling said, “Hey, you need to maintain the status quo until we make a final decision,” which hasn’t happened yet.
But then, in March 2025, Venezuela sent [naval ship] to Exxon’s floating offshore production vessel [Laughs] and told the staff on that boat that they were in Venezuelan waters, you know, they were aggressively asking a bunch of questions. It was a very aggressive act, and it was directly on the Exxon ship, and that really involved the United States. So all of a sudden, the U.S. State Department sort of put out a statement about it – various entities were saying, “Hey, you guys can’t do this. You need to calm things down. »
And then Marco Rubio actually went to Venezuela at the end of March 2025 and gave this press conference with Guya. Chinese officials, where he said: “Venezuela will have to deal with the US military if they can’t calm them down with this kind of thing.” »
Pierre-Louis: So, at the root of all these struggles for oil, there is the fact that the planet is warming…
Westervelt: [Laughs.] RIGHT.
Pierre-Louis: Climate change is real…
Westervelt: That’s right, yeah, uh-huh.
Pierre-Louis: And the reality is that if we want to maintain conditions suitable for human life, we must completely stop using oil and fossil fuels. We really have the impression that we are in [an] redux from the early 2000s, but the climate is much warmer. [Laughs.]
Westervelt: Yeah, it’s much worse. I mean, actually, that’s also for me what attracted me to Guyana’s history in the first place, is that [roughly] 90 percent of Guyana’s population lives on this small strip of coastline just off Georgetown that will be underwater in about 10 years.
Pierre-Louis: It’s shocking.
Westervelt: [Roughly] 90 percent of the population you have to move and yet they were throwing themselves fully into this new oil industry. I was like, “What? What? Make sense of this.”
But what’s sad is, to me, it’s such an illustration of the complete inability of the international community to do anything to solve this problem, to come up with, you know, any climate damage policy or reparations. Because Guyana, which was also, like, the first model of paying developing countries for carbon sinks and working with the Global South on carbon credits and all that: like, they were… you know, Norway invested a lot of money in preserving the forests in Guyana with the goal of maintaining a carbon sink there. They still constitute one of the largest carbon sinks in the world today. They said, “We can’t pay to move our entire country. [Laughs] of sea level rise without this oil money. So this is the biggest “robbing Peter to pay Paul” story that I’ve ever heard of, and it’s just… it’s mind-blowing that they’re now at the mercy of the oil companies to pay for climate adaptation.
Pierre-Louis: It’s really tragic, if you think about it.
Westervelt: It’s totally tragic, yeah.
Pierre-Louis: From a climate perspective, what do you think is missing in the conversation around Venezuela and Guyana?
Westervelt: Well, I mean, I think the whole climate is missing from this conversation. I feel like the fact that these two countries are going to be massively affected by climate impacts is almost completely absent. Even, you know, Guyana is sort of saying, “Oh, well, you know, if we have all this oil money, then we can pay to, like, get everyone out of harm’s way.” » Well, where is he out of danger?
What happens if there is a breakout? GOOD, all of the Caribbean is affected. You have an oil spill that hits… I mean, Exxon’s own environmental impact report on this shows that if such a thing were to happen, it would affect 14 different countries in the Caribbean, 14, and all of which are at least somewhat dependent on tourism…
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.
Westervelt: For their economy, once these beaches are destroyed by an oil spill, how will it happen? Not to mention the food source…
Pierre-Louis: Yeah, fishing…
Westervelt: [Laughs.] Fishing.
Pierre-Louis: It’s big in the Caribbean.
Westervelt: Exactly. So there are many levels of issues here.
And again, I just felt like – when I talked to people in Guyana too, “What’s going on here? Right, guys? I thought you guys were so concerned about the environment. [Laughs] and climate and everything else,” they say, “Yeah, we are, but, like, how are we going to pay for all that? And they kind of said to themselves – and I don’t think they’re wrong about this – “Well, what’s the difference between taking money from the Norwegian government to keep our trees [and] take money from Exxon to drill for our oil?
Pierre-Louis: Okay, well, it’s been… I won’t say a lovely conversation, but it’s been…
Westervelt: [Laughs.]
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.] A illuminating conversation …
Westervelt: Yeah.
Pierre-Louis: Thank you very much for your time today.
Westervelt: THANKS. Thank you for inviting me.
Pierre-Louis: That’s all for today. Tune in Monday for our weekly roundup of science news.
But I have a favor to ask you before you leave. I need your help for an upcoming episode: it’s about kisses. Tell us about your most memorable kiss. What made him special? How did you feel? Record a voice memo on your phone or computer and send it to ScienceQuickly@sciam.com. Be sure to include your name and where you are from.
Science quickly is produced by me, Kendra Pierre-Louis, with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck check in on our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more recent and in-depth scientific news.
For Scientific American, This is Kendra Pierre-Louis. Have a great weekend!