Business needs a stable and coherent legal framework in a country before they’ll risk billions investing in it. Which gets in the way of Trump’s grandiose plans for Venezuela. From Tracy at renegaderesources.pro:
So here is what we know so far:
The Reserves That Were Never Audited
In early 2011, Hugo Chávez announced Venezuela had surpassed Saudi Arabia to claim the world’s largest proven oil reserves at 300+ billion barrels. That figure became gospel in energy markets and remains the number OPEC publishes today. There’s one problem: it was never independently verified.
OPEC doesn’t audit member reported reserves. It publishes whatever governments claim. And Venezuela’s tripling of its reserves happened under the notoriously corrupt Chávez regime when oil was trading near $100 per barrel, meaning much of what got reclassified as “proven” was marginal Orinoco heavy crude that’s uneconomic to produce at current prices.
Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin American Energy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute, puts Venezuela’s actual recoverable reserves at 100 to 110 billion barrels. Rystad Energy estimates 81 billion. That’s still substantial, but it’s not the largest in the world. And more importantly, proving reserves in the ground means nothing if you can’t economically extract them.
Trump Meets Reality on January 9th
Less than a week after U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro, President Trump convened oil executives at the White House on January 9, 2026, hoping to secure $100 billion in commitments to rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure. Seventeen companies sent representatives: ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Shell, Halliburton, Marathon, Valero, Repsol, Eni, and various traders and independents.
What Trump got instead was a reality check.
The reserves are hard to get to and the oil infrastructure is crumbling.
When the comrades come back into power they may seize it all.
Viceroy Disco Boots Rubio can’t run everything and I love those memes of Rubio as oil tanker captain, ballroom painter, Avenger.