President Trump stands ready to send U.S. Big Oil into Venezuela en masse, but the reality is messy

More than doubling Venezuela’s current oil production likely would take until 2030 and cost about $110 billion, said research firm Rystad Energy, arguing that bringing Venezuela—home to the world’s largest known oil reserves—back to its previous highs would take even longer. Venezuela’s current oil flows of roughly 900,000 barrels daily are about one-third of its volumes at the turn of the century thanks to mismanagement, labor strikes, sanctions, and financial woes.

“We’re not waving a magic wand here and, all of a sudden, more oil starts flowing out of Venezuela,” said Dan Pickering, founder and chief investment officer for Pickering Energy Partners consulting and research firm. 

“You’re not going to bully Exxon [Mobil] and Chevron into spending a bunch of money in a risky spot,” Pickering said. “Trump says, ‘Drill, baby, drill,” and the industry didn’t listen to it. They’re not going to blindly deploy capital because the U.S. government says they should.”

Oil prices remain low—they ticked up less than 2% on Jan. 5—because the world is awash in oil, making it harder to justify costly and risky new foreign investments. “All of the excitement and hype surrounding Venezuela’s future really deserves a reality check. The hype and reality are very far apart,” said Matt Reed, vice president of the geopolitical and energy consultancy Foreign Reports.

“If you’re talking about building up Venezuela, you’re talking about bringing in [oil] companies that need real certainty. They need the situation to stabilize. They need to be confident it’s going to stay stable if they’re going to assume the risk and invest. At this point, no one is going to rush in,” Reed said.

“Who is going to run Venezuela next year or the year after that?” Reed asked. “The Trump administration says, ‘Well, we’ll deal with that later.’ In the meantime, the oil companies are not going to assume the best-case scenario is going to unfold and commit to anything.”

As the U.S. focused in the fall on bombing boats from Venezuela—killing more than 100 people to date—the Trump administration cited narco-terrorism and stemming immigration problems. When the U.S. began seizing oil tankers in December and launched a pseudo-oil blockade, Trump began talking more and more about oil and the 2007 Venezuelan expropriation of oil assets from U.S. companies as justification for the Jan. 3 attacks and arrests. Every U.S. company except Chevron has left Venezuela. Chevron operates under a special license and produces nearly 20% of Venezuela’s oil.

“The oil companies are going to go in and rebuild their system,” Trump said Jan. 4. “They’re going to spend billions of dollars, and they’re going to take the oil out of the ground, and we’re taking back what they stole. Remember, they stole our property. It was the greatest theft in the history of America.”

Ironically, Trump is essentially using oil to argue that Venezuela is not like the 2003 Iraq invasion under George W. Bush that critics claimed was about oil, Reed said. “When Trump talks about oil, he’s talking about money. He’s making the argument that any reconstruction is going to pay for itself … and the U.S. can avoid the endless, messy, costly regime change wars that have defined the War on Terror.”

“A lot of Americans find it distasteful that the U.S. might be waging wars for oil. That’s not a winning argument for politicians,” Reed added.

What comes next?

Wood Mackenzie and other energy research firms believe—within a year—Venezuela could spike its oil volumes from less than 1 million barrels daily to about 1.2 million barrels with U.S. cooperation, and the state-owned oil company PDVSA and Chevron tackling the so-called low-hanging fruit.

Anything else is a lot more complicated to rebuild much of the production, pipeline, and processing infrastructure to get a lot more oil out of the ground and shipped to countries around the world, primarily China and the U.S.

Still, Chevron’s stock jumped 5% on Jan. 5, while Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips ticked up by more than 2%. Two of the biggest oilfield services players best positioned to work in Venezuela again, Halliburton’s stock rose by almost 8%, and SLB by nearly 9%.

The oil companies are reluctant to comment publicly, wanting to avoid upsetting either the Trump administration or the remaining Maduro regime, currently led by Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who is striking a more conciliatory tone with the U.S. after her initially defiant rhetoric that Maduro was illegally kidnapped and must be released back into power.

Exxon, Halliburton, and SLB declined comment for now. ConocoPhillips said it is monitoring the situation and that it is “premature” to speculate on future investments.

Chevron said it is focused on the safety of its employees in Venezuela and the integrity of its oil assets, declining any commentary on the future.

In a Washington, D.C. conference in November, Chevron Chairman and CEO Mike Wirth said the geopolitical circumstances are difficult, but Venezuela’s potential is worth the effort. “The kinds of swings that you see in places like Venezuela are challenging. But we play a long game. Venezuela is blessed with a lot of geologic resource and bounty. And we are committed to the people of the country and would like to be there as part of rebuilding Venezuela’s economy in time when circumstances change.”

Most oil refineries around the world are not configured to process the extra heavy grades of crude that come from Venezuela, but China has many refineries that can and, thus, receives about 80% of Venezuela’s oil exports. Energy analysts said controlling Venezuelan oil could give the U.S. more negotiating leverage with China on the rare earths processing industry dominated by the country.

Most of the rest of the oil exports head to the U.S. Gulf Coast, where several refineries thirst for more of the heavy volumes and have increasingly needed to rely instead on heavy Canadian oil sands barrels.

And, in the short term, Venezuela’s oil output could drop further before it rebounds or is rebuilt.

“What matters right now for the oil market is the [naval] blockade. And the blockade is going to stay in place for as long as it takes to get results,” Reed said, arguing that the Venezuelan leadership will need to comply with U.S. demands. “That could be months. That’s a lot of oil the Venezuelans will not be able to export until Trump is satisfied.”