Trump's Venezuela oil gambit depends on a 'swashbuckling' attitude the market lacks Submitted by Sean Mathews on Tue, 01/06/2026 - 21:48 Trump's bid to control Venezuelan oil rewrites a script that has played out since the break up of the Soviet Union and Iraq invasion US President Donald Trump dances after speaking during a House Republican retreat at The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, on 6 January 2026 (Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP) Off US President Donald Trump’s views on geopolitics and energy were shaped against the backdrop of the two monumental events that rocked the oil market: the Soviet Union’s demise in the 1990s and the US invasion of Iraq a decade later. In abducting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro over the weekend and attempting to control the Latin American country’s oil wealth, Trump is channelling some of the themes from each episode in history, even as he tries to write a new script. The 2007 book The Oil and the Glory reveals how shady speculators, American energy companies, and diplomats dove headfirst into the post-Soviet states around the Caspian Sea in the 90s to strike it rich in oil. Trump wants to tap a similar spirit of adventurism in the name of “Black Gold” to unlock Venezuela’s oil riches today. American energy companies will “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure - the oil infrastructure - and start making money for the country,” he said. But Steve Levine, the author of The Oil and the Glory, told Middle East Eye that few big oil companies want to return to the “swashbuckling era” of the 90s. “Unlike with the Caspian - [Big Oil] will not be in a rush to elbow past one another in a frenzy to get at [Venezuela’s oil], even though it's the largest single reserve in the world,” LeVine said. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, its energy-rich constituent states, like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, were taken over by former Communist regime insiders who were only too happy to cut favourable deals with American energy companies. Some, like Azerbaijan’s Aliyev family, still control those countries and have been handsomely rewarded. Trump seems to have a similar strategy in mind for Venezuela. 'Keep the oil' The US plans to work with remnants of Maduro’s government to “run” the country and take “tremendous wealth out of the ground”, Trump has said. US intelligence agencies reportedly told Trump and his inner circle, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that Venezuela’s opposition abroad did not have the local support to govern the country, and their best bet was leaning on Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro’s vice president, to keep order and get crude flowing. “She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again, very simple,” Trump said. 'If this is truly a war for oil, it's about the dumbest war for oil you can possibly have' - Greg Priddy, Center for National Interest Rodriguez has vacillated between condemning the US’s attack and signalling she might work with the Trump administration. She came under the US’s radar during talks with American energy companies, but even if she wants to work with the US, experts say, she has to contend with the security forces. LeVine, who spent decades reporting in the Caucasus and Russia, said Trump lacks a malleable government in Venezuela like the US enjoyed following the collapse of the Soviet Union. “The western influx into the Caspian region and Russia was not a military assault, and was welcomed by the local governments,” he told MEE. For many critics, the western thirst for foreign oil reached its apogee with the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Regardless of the intention, the reality was very different. Trump himself has famously used the invasion of Iraq as a punching bag for a war that cost American blood without delivering financial gain. “I’ve been saying it for years. Take the oil,” has become one of Trump’s trademark lines. On Tuesday, American talk show host Joe Scarborough said Trump told him that he was taking lessons from Iraq. “The difference between Iraq and this is that [former President George W Bush] didn’t keep the oil. We’re going to keep the oil,” Scraborough recalled Trump saying. Enemies not allowed to control large oil reserves, US ambassador to UN says Read More » In Iraq, the US demolished the foundations of Saddam Hussein’s secular, Arab nationalist rule with de-Baathification. The US became bogged down in an insurgency. It took five years from the time of the invasion for the first western oil company to begin operating in Iraq. For now, Trump is keeping the current ruling elite in control of Venezuela, but from an oil industry standpoint, his task in the Latin American country is much harder, experts say. Oil is classified by its density and sulfur content. The Venezuelan variety is heavy, which makes it expensive and labourious to extract, whereas Iraqi crude is light, making it cheap and easy to take out of the ground. That means Venezuela's oil needs to be refined, and while it has some domestic refineries, much of it is refined in the US, China and India. But no one disputes that Venezuela’s oil industry has untapped potential. 'Getting burned' Venezuela is home to 17 percent of global crude reserves. It is currently producing around 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil, down from around three million bpd in the late 90s when Venezuela was an energy powerhouse and Caracas a boom city defined by vast disparities in wealth. Venezuela’s oil industry went into steep decline after Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998. He vowed to use the country’s oil riches to readdress Venezuela’s wealth gap, tapping a blend of socialism, nationalism and populism called Chavismo. While the oil industry was declining decades before US sanctions were initially slapped on Venezuela in 2005, in the last ten years, it has seen a more terminal decline thanks to a combination of underinvestment, mismanagement and sanctions. Greg Priddy, an expert on energy at the Center for the National Interest, told MEE that reviving Venezuela’s oil industry the way Trump has described it would take around $100bn from energy companies like Chevron and Exxon Mobil at a time when oil prices are low, and expectations for demand in the future are conservative. 'Chevron has taken that leap a couple of times and been burned. Exxon was burned, too' - Steve Levine, author of The Oil and the Glory “If this is truly a war for oil, it's about the dumbest war for oil you can possibly have,” Priddy said. “Reviving Venezuela’s oil sector is the kind of long-term project that Big Oil is reticent about right now. Investing in heavy crude projects entails a long lead time and is very capital-intensive. These are the kind of investments based on assumptions about demand between seven and 30 from now,” he said. There are some signs of oil investor interest. For example, Chevron’s former head of Latin American operations, Ali Moshiri, told The Financial Times this week that he is raising $2bn for Venezuelan oil projects. But much bigger numbers would be needed to revive Venezuela’s industry and increase the production on a scale Trump has signalled he wants. Among US energy companies, only Chevron is active in Venezuela with a special licence from the Trump administration. LeVine told MEE that, having been burned before when Chavez partly nationalised the industry, US Big Oil will be cautious. "To become a strategic asset like say Kazakhstan or Baku, Venezuela would have to become a trusted place where you could put down big money for 30 years and know your field or your proceeds would not get expropriated,” he said. “Chevron has taken that leap a couple of times and been burned. Exxon was burned, too,” he added. 'Ends of the earth' The oil rush in the free-wheeling post-Soviet world and even post-2003 Iraq occurred before the advent of US shale production. Hydraulic fracking technology means oil companies can make bets inside the US, instead of gambling in geopolitical hotspots. “This is not like three decades ago when everyone was running to the ends of the earth to find more oil,” Priddy said. Oil prices are also low. Brent, the international Benchmark, is trading at around $60 per barrel. 'Spectacle of empire': US has no day-after plan for Venezuela, experts say Read More » Middle Eastern countries are also boosting output. Producers like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are pumping more oil as they try to regain market share. Even Libya, which is divided into rival governments, is eyeing increasing its output. “The oil companies need to justify any investment in Venezuela to their shareholders,” Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst and head of research at Global Risk Management, told MEE. “Given the spare capacity in Opec, you have to ask yourself - Is there a need for two million bpd more of Venezuelan oil on the market in five years?” Rasmussen said. “Right now, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are probably wondering if they should pump more to bring down prices and discourage big investments in Venezuela,” he said. Rasmussen said a likely outcome in Venezuela is US companies investing in existing infrastructure and potentially getting production up by "a couple of hundred thousand bpd", adding that control of Venezuela's oil is probably more important to Trump than massively boosting production. "It will actually be a more competitive market, especially if Opec keeps boosting production," he said. Venezuela crisis News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0