President Donald Trump likes the idea of “very large” US oil companies going into Venezuela, investing billions of dollars and getting the oil flowing again. The companies themselves have reason to be less keen: for them, Venezuela’s resources could prove costly and disruptive.
It is true, of course, that Venezuela could be a much bigger force on global oil markets than it is today. It holds roughly a fifth of the world’s total reserves, but accounts for less than 1 per cent of daily barrels produced — and its rate of production is less than a third of what it was in the late 1990s.
China, too, may have been a factor in Trump’s thinking. While Venezuelan oil made up just 300,000 of the 11.3mn barrels China imported each day in 2024 and 2025, according to the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies, companies from the People’s Republic had gained a foothold in Venezuela’s oil-drilling industry.