- - Trump wants the US oil industry to thrive in Venezuela again. That won’t be easy

Analysis by Elisabeth Buchwald, CNNJanuary 4, 2026 at 4:26 PM

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View of the El Palito refinery of the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA from the El Faro district. - Jesus Vargas/picture alliance/Getty Images

President Donald Trump said he’s counting on American companies to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry.

But the world’s largest proven oil reserves, tantalizing as they seem, may come with more risk than reward for the US oil giants, energy-industry watchers told CNN.

Extracting more oil from Venezuela would require rebuilding the country’s gutted oil infrastructure, which would cost, by Trump’s own telling, billions of dollars. And crude isn’t fetching the kind of prices that would make this kind of investment an easy call. Plus, refining Venezuela’s particular brand of crude oil is an expensive undertaking in itself.

It would be a hard sell in a politically stable country, let alone one in the throes of a political crisis following the ouster of its authoritarian president.

“This whole thing just leaves more questions than answers on the future political situation in Venezuela, and that’s going to be foremost on the minds of corporate planners and industry planners that want to consider the good opportunities there,” said Clayton Seigle, a senior fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

On Saturday, special US forces executed a large-scale US operation, successfully capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores and transporting them to New York. The two were charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy and weapons offenses.

Trump said the US will “run” the country until safe leadership is installed. That same day, Venezuela’s Supreme Court installed Delcy Rodriguez – who oversees the country’s state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA – as interim president.

Trump said oil companies will make Venezuela realize its lost potential as a major global oil producer.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said.

America’s fraught history with Venezuela’s oil

Foreign oil companies have been operating in Venezuela for more than a century. Its proximity to the United States made Venezuela a key strategic partner for US interests. And its cheap and viscous oil proved to be the perfect blend for American oil companies, which built their entire refinery infrastructure for Venezuela’s brand of crude.

On top of which, in the early 1990s Venezuela introduced a set of new policies aimed at further incentivizing more investment in the oil sector.

But when socialist Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, he took direct control of PDVSA and allowed Venezuela’s oil infrastructure to fester and crumble. That prevented oil companies in the country from producing as much crude as they were capable of, and the country’s production fell by more than a third over the past quarter century.

“We built Venezuela oil industry with American talent, drive and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us,” Trump said Saturday.

Chevron is the last remaining American oil company in the country – operating on and off over the past decade as US sanctions and a series of waivers allowed the company to maintain some operations there. About a quarter of Venezuela’s oil, produced by Chevron, is exported to the United States.

“Chevron has been operating there for literally 100 years, and they’ve seen it all, and they have stuck through thick and thin to have a really advantageous position now,” Seigle told CNN.

Chevron’s footprint is going to make it hard for a new or returning player to compete, said Michael Klare, senior visiting fellow at the American Arms Association. “Any company moving in is going to need years to duplicate that capability.”

“You just can’t walk into Venezuela and pump oil. It’s an exceedingly difficult and complex process that Chevron has, over the years, excelled at, but very few companies have that technology at hand.”

Following Saturday’s events, a Chevron spokesperson said the company will “continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.”

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