As usual, mainstream media reporting about what we might be getting into in Venezuela is mostly superficial, sensationalist and not very relevant. Unremarkably, that just reflects in deep incompatibility of mostly unregulated capitalism with professional news reporting in the context of the human condition, which tends to like easy superficiality and exciting sensationalism. Despite that mess, four key points about America’s Venezuelan adventure need to be made for those who can tolerate boring facts and neutral analysis.
First, most Venezuelan crude oil is very heavy, high‑sulfur, and extremely greenhouse‑gas intensive. It is among the worst oil in the world from both environmental and refining perspectives. One needs to dilute Venezuelan oil with other lighter oil products just to be able to pump the heavy black sludge through a pipeline. (link 1, link 2, link 3)
Second, rehabilitating and modernizing Venezuela’s oil sector as Trump promises will require on the order of $60–70 billion to $180–200 billion depending on how far output is pushed. That’s projected to take years to decades. Years of underinvestment and Venezuelan government mismanagement severely damaged Venezuela’s oil sector infrastructure. Corrupt and incompetent government naturally leads to ugly results like this. (link 1, link 4) That’s why corruption and incompetence is a bad thing for average people, which goes without saying.
Third, American oil majors are signaling they will not commit that scale of capital without strong guarantees, and the Trump administration and allies are openly floating government‑backed financing, political‑risk insurance, and even direct reimbursement. Naturally, pro-public interest groups in the US warn that this amounts to U.S. taxpayers de‑risking Big Oil’s Venezuela bet. Nowhere is there any provision for American taxpayers to benefit from any of this. Oil companies will continue to charge what the market will bear, whether consumers can bear it or not. (link 5, link 6, link 7)
Fourth, if Venezuelan oil does rebound from the current less than million barrels/day to over ~2 million/day, some or a lot of American oil frackers will probably be put out of business. As one source put it, what Trump says he wants to do has sparked alarm “across the US shale patch”. I bet that’s an understatement! (link 8, link 9)
In conclusion, if big US oil companies pay Trump enough, there is good reason to believe that he he will use US tax dollars to de-risk US oil company adventures in Venezuela. Now that the US Supreme Court has largely legalized corruption in government and shielded it from transparency, US oil companies would be at least tempted to take a tax dollar shield in hopes of massive future profits. In 2025, Shell, Phillips 66, and Chevron lobbied Treasury on Venezuelan sanctions and licenses. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. These licenses are lucrative business waivers that circumvent U.S. economic sanctions. There is nothing holding Trump back from seeing if he can get a multi-hundred million or maybe a multi-billion dollar personal payoff from using our money to get help himself a huge payday. (link 10, link 11, link 12, link 13)
Like or believe it or not, corruption and sleaze like this is just the new MAGA business as usual norm in American politics and government.