Does Trump intend to run Venezuela’s oil industry long term?
Venezuela remains reeling from the detention and arrest of its controversial leader, but many are nervous about the big decisions ahead.
The United States took control of Venezuela’s oil supplies after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro this month. And President Donald Trump is already meeting with industry executives to discuss ways to revive the nation’s once-booming industry.
Energy Institute Statistical Review data obtained by USA TODAY offers a glimpse into how Venezuela’s oil industry operates and why the Central American country is so important to U.S. oil interests.
Here’s what three graphs tell us about the Venezuelan oil industry:
Venezuela’s oil industry boomed in the 1990s and early 2000s, but by 2015 the average number of barrels produced per day by Venezuelan oil companies had plummeted.
Some of this had to do with the policies of the late authoritarian leader Hugo Chávez, who served from 2002 to 2013. The industry has been nationalized for decades;, He pushed for greater state control and advocated government control over the oil industry.
In 2007, when Venezuela was producing 3.2 million barrels of oil per day, more than three times what it produces today, Chávez asked the government to increase its stake in private oil company projects in Venezuela.
American companies such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips refused to follow President Chávez’s plan and left the country. Only Chevron remained.
Venezuela has also been hit by a sharp decline in oil prices that began in 2014, and the industry was dealt a further blow when the United States imposed sanctions on the country in January 2019.
Venezuela not only exports rich, heavy crude oil, but also has the capacity to refine oil. But data shows the amount of crude the country moves through its refineries has fallen significantly compared to the peak of production.
Data shows that if Venezuelan refineries had operated at their original refining capacity, they would have produced more than 1 million barrels of additional oil per day in 2023. But a Congressional Research Service report questions whether production can reach that capacity without “significant investment and maintenance.”
ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods also questioned the capabilities of Venezuela’s oil industry during a roundtable discussion with President Trump on January 10th.
“We’ve had property foreclosed on there twice, so you can imagine going into it a third time would require some pretty big changes from what we’ve seen here so far,” Woods said.
“If you look at the legal and commercial structures and frameworks that are in place in Venezuela today, we need to make some important changes because they are not investable today,” he said.
Nevertheless, Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, amounting to just under 304 billion barrels in 2024, rivaled only by Middle Eastern giant Saudi Arabia, which had 298 billion barrels in the same year.
Venezuela has more oil reserves than all of North America combined, 243 billion barrels.
