We Don’t Need More Oil Today. Venezuela Is a Long Game for Trump
If it’s successful, and that’s a big if, Trump’s imperialistic investment would pay off shortly after US oil output peaks.
State-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) operates on Lake Maracaibo.
Photographer: Gaby Oráa/Bloomberg
Rusty pipelines. Unchecked spills. Decades of chronic underinvestment, brain drain and mismanagement. Venezuela’s oil industry is in shambles, and restoring it to its former glory would cost an estimated $100 billion—if Big Oil would even want to undertake such a risky repair job. Also, the crude in its vast reserves is viscous and difficult to extract, and it would be slow to reach the market in significant volumes, in some cases taking as long as a decade. That’s too late to offer much in the way of lower prices during the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.
So why is he pushing so hard to bring it back?