The most important context here is that while America was a large net importer of petroleum products in the early 2000s, today it is a major producer. Back in early 2003, the U.S. was importing about 10 million barrels each day, and that figure had been on an upward trajectory since the early 1980s—lending credence to the oil argument with respect to Iraq. But since the advent of fracking technology, America has become the largest producer of oil and gas in the world, and a large net petroleum exporter, to the tune of about 3.3 million barrels per day as of October last year.

The price of oil, about $58 at time of writing, is already dangerously low for American fracking companies, whose investments typically pencil out with prices at $60 per barrel or above. More oil on global markets means those prices would drop even lower, crushing the economics of drilling even further. The U.S. oil industry needs Trump to swoop in and add another few million barrels a day of production like it needs a hole in the head.

When oil executives have been asked point-blank about their interest in Venezuela, they were notably noncommittal. “We’d have to see what the economics look like,” said Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil. “It would be premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments,” a ConocoPhillips spokesperson added.

[…]

The characteristics of Venezuelan oil also make this quite unlikely. Its reserves—which were likely overstated by Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez, by the way—are very viscous and sulfur-laden; much like Canadian tar sands, the product is so gloopy that you have to cut it with some kind of solvent to get it to flow in a pipe. This makes Venezuelan crude lucrative for refiners but not so much for oil companies to pull from the ground. In short, it’s expensive to drill, transport, and refine, just like the fracked oil that is barely turning a profit right now.

Moreover, Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is also in ruins, thanks to decades of chronic mismanagement and American sanctions. Industry experts report that it would take perhaps a decade of heavy investment totaling $100 billion to bring it back to where it was in the early ’90s. Now, some American refineries were built to handle Venezuelan oil, but that capacity is now partly occupied by Canadian crude, and again, refining more would come at the expense of the industry as a whole.

Over the long term, the looming collapse in oil demand makes a yearslong investment in Venezuelan oil rigs and pipelines highly risky. While the EV transition has partly stalled out in America thanks to Trump, much of the rest of the world is charging ahead. Fully one-quarter of all cars sold in the world last year were EVs. In China, the largest single car market in the world, more than half of cars sold were EVs in 2025—a nearly tenfold increase in just five years.

[…]

Fuel for cars and trucks makes up the overwhelming majority of oil use. EVs have already taken a large bite out of oil demand—on the order of a million barrels a day—and that is going to increase very quickly. It follows that any investment into repairing Venezuela’s rotten oil infrastructure is highly likely to be worthless by the time it’s finished a decade hence.

Now, I don’t doubt that oil companies—and Trump-aligned business titans in general—will attempt to profit from this move. They can monetize the “proven” reserves in Venezuela by touting it as a potential revenue generator. Some refining companies, particularly Chevron, which has been operating in Venezuela for around a century, might make a bit of money out of it. Some oil executives, who tend to be in the class of rich people boiling their brains in right-wing propaganda, might even have supported the attack. But the American oil sector as a whole will not benefit, and neither will the American people. If I had to guess, very little additional oil will get drilled at all.

If there’s one consistent theme in the history of Donald Trump’s business career, it’s that he sucks at business. He’s a stupid, domineering brute who compulsively rips off everyone he interacts with, with the possible exception of Jeffrey Epstein. Trump’s career in casinos and real estate ended in repeated bankruptcy. He didn’t even maximize the profit from the real estate empire he inherited from his father. So it comes as no surprise that he thinks about imperialist conquest like some 14th-century steppe warlord. It’s been more than a century since wars for plunder made any economic sense, but for Trump to realize that, he would have to be capable of rational thought.

Also bonus reading on incompetent and money addicted Venezuelan opposition and the plots to oust Maduro:

https://prospect.org/2025/11/26/30-billion-dollar-identity-theft-of-venezuela/

It’s perhaps little wonder that a community of expats that concocts such plots would almost universally cheer on the draconian economic sanctions that directly caused the vast majority of Venezuela’s suffering during Trump’s first term. The suffering was presaged during the Obama years by a campaign of agitation for the government to simultaneously default on, and the global financial community to boycott buying, its so-called “Hunger Bonds,” on the “theory” that every penny the government paid in interest to foreign creditors was a penny not being used to feed a starving child.

The campaign was logically ridiculous, since feeding its citizens required Venezuela to access international credit markets to sell oil and buy flour, and defaulting on its obligations would make that more expensive and difficult. But never mind reality: Starting in 2016, the “Hunger Bonds” crowd staged astroturf shaming operations to taunt institutions that purchased them or even included them in emerging market indexes. More recently, during the October IMF meetings someone hired a billboard truck to drive around a hotel that was hosting a cocktail party for the hedge fund Greylock Capital Management. “GREYLOCK CAPITAL FEAST: Enablers of Maduro’s Tyrannical Dictatorship,” one side blared. “Greylock: Where Ethics Default. Your activities enable the narco-terrorist regime. HAVE YOU NO SHAME?”