Within hours of the U.S. operation that captured Venezuela’s then-President Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump made a sweeping claim: the United States would “run” Venezuela and sell its oil globally, and it would do so quickly.
Energy analysts were immediately skeptical. Venezuela’s oil industry, they warned, has been hollowed out by decades of mismanagement, corruption and an exodus of skilled workers, making any rapid attempt to rebuild at scale unlikely.
Those pressures were compounded by U.S. economic sanctions that esclated under the first Trump administration, which helped push Venezuela away from Washington and toward China — a shift that Trump’s current administration now appears eager to reverse, as Trump has said he wants American oil companies to invest heavily to revive the industry.
But major oil firms want certainty that their contracts will be honored before they step in, according to the U.S.-based trade organization American Petroleum Institute, and Venezuela has a history of nationalizing foreign oil companies’ assets. American oil majors, jaded by past losses and wary of political instability, are not convinced that a return to Caracas will be worth the risk.
That gap reflects a combination of physical restrictions and political realities.
Venezuela’s oil is notoriously among the thickest, heaviest and dirtiest in the world. Handling heavy crude requires a lighter diluent — a light hydrocarbon fluid or oil, often naphtha or condensate — which is blended with the heavier crude to enable flow through pipelines.
But Venezuela’s crude is better suited to produce diesel than America’s lighter-grade gasoline, and it competes directly with Russian oil. American refineries that are optimized to handle heavy crude are eager to get more Venezuelan oil because they can handle it efficiently and it tends to be cheaper.
The South American country does have refineries capable of processing its heavy, sour crude, but they have been plagued by years of mismanagement and operational failures.
Additionally, Venezuela does not produce enough diluent domestically, and for decades, it relied on the U.S. for both imported diluent and specialized refineries equipped to handle its heavy crude.
As years of neglect and political turmoil damaged infrastructure — and, later, as successive rounds of U.S. sanctions increasingly restricted trade and financing — Venezuelan oil production plummeted. Between 2015 and 2025, exports dropped by almost two-thirds. And the oil that was still being extracted needed to find new markets.