Despite crumbling oil infrastructure degraded by decades of underinvestment, corruption and US sanctions, Venezuela was still producing 1.5 million barrels of oil equivalent a day at the end of last year.  

According to Global Witness analysis of Rystad Energy data, the Venezuelan government’s take – revenues owed to the state from production – was some $13 billion in 2025.

Global Witness estimates that oil and gas production in the country could generate $150 billion for the Venezuelan treasury over the next 10 years (2026-2035).  

While it is unclear how much Venezuela can expect to earn from an oil sector under US occupation, signals from oil majors cast doubt over the willingness of foreign oil companies to reinvest back into the South American country, which under Maduro saw the poverty rate surge above 90 percent at its peak.  

Oil revenues have historically contributed tens of billions to Venezuela’s national economy, although huge sums were squandered or embezzled under Maduro’s oppressive rule. Trump’s colonialist seizure of Venezuela’s most profitable resource risks continuing to deny millions of Venezuelans the proceeds from its extraction.   

Although Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA doesn’t publish its accounts, Reuters reported in July the company made $17.5 billion from oil sales abroad in 2024.

Since the US invasion, reports suggest that the interim government in Caracas could relax laws mandating that all oil sales be conducted by PDVSA. New oil production guidelines, set to be passed into law this week, leave huge questions about how oil revenues will reach the citizens of Venezuela.  

Patrick Galey, head of fossil fuels investigations at Global Witness, said:

“Trump’s move to seize Venezuela’s oil is quite simply resource theft writ large. Not only does it add further to the US’ climate debt burden, but it funnels vast wealth to Trump’s billionaire cronies, off the backs of millions of impoverished Venezuelans.

“It’s deplorable to see the world’s richest nation – and history’s largest polluter – enact this nakedly colonial plunder. After decades of mismanagement, Venezuelans need democratic and transparent control of their resource revenues, not a neocolonial wealth grab. The country’s problems will not be solved by putting a corrupt national elite under the thumb of a corrupt international one.

“There is only one constituent who should decide how the proceeds from Venezuela’s natural resources are spent: the Venezuelan people.”

The US Department of Energy says that under the terms of Trump’s “energy deal” struck on January 6, “all proceeds from the sale of Venezuelan crude oil and oil products will settle first in U.S. controlled accounts at globally recognised banks to guarantee the legitimacy and integrity of the ultimate distribution of proceeds”.  

An executive order signed on January 9 states that the White House views Venezuelan oil revenue “as the sovereign property of the Government of Venezuela held in custody by the United States”.  

Experts have questioned the validity of such an arrangement, and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren saying said there was “no basis in law” for Trump to sell assets seized by the US military.  

The Trump administration says it is “selectively rolling back sanctions to enable the transport and sale of Venezuelan crude and oil products” and has promised to “authorize the import of select oilfield equipment, parts and services to immediately offset decades of production decline”.  

Trump himself signalled US control could last for years, telling the New York Times: “We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil. We’re getting oil prices down, and we’re going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need.” 

Yet the sheer cost of maintaining Venezuelan output means Western majors are reticent to commit to long-term investment in the country’s oil system, to the extent that Trump has suggested US taxpayers could underwrite any initial spend.  

Venezuela’s crude oil is heavy and sour, and has an outsized impact on climate change due to gas flaring, venting and leaks during its production.

Oil spills, particularly in the field-dense Orinoco basin in the centre of the country, the northern Falcóon state, and around Maracaibo Lake in the northwest, have had a devastating effect on local wildlife. 

MethodologyThe data covering oil and gas production for 2015-2035 was sourced from energy business intelligence agency Rystad Energy’s UCube database. UCube is an integrated field-by-field database of the global upstream oil and gas market, covering the time span from 1900 to 2100. Rystad’s data is widely referenced by major oil and gas companies, the media and international bodies such as the IEA UCube takes into account oil and gas demand to project asset-level supply. Projections are based on data sources including company reporting (e.g. earnings and profits reporting) and policies, government sources, energy service reporting, energy agencies and academic research and news articles. Where reported data is unavailable, data is modelled based on the above sources and supported by a comprehensive database of global oil and gas fields Data for this analysis was accessed on January 21, 2026 and come from Rystad’s January 2026 database.  There are several caveats to the figures, including the modelling of government take being used to pay some of Venezuela’s substantial national debts, estimating government take during a period of sanctions is inherently complex, and a base-case oil price assumption of 70 USD/bbl “Government take” refers to the portion of cash flow that is directed to government, including fiscal parameters such as royalty, government profit, and income tax from production. Main sources of government take include: Royalty (including all taxes based on revenues, but not profits, such as royalty and export taxes); government profit oil (including payments to governments or national oil companies through government profit oil, applicable to profit-sharing contracts); income tax (all taxes related to profits and revenues minus deductible costs, such as corporate tax, petroleum tax and other windfall taxes Government take calculation also takes into account cost recovery, cost recovery carried forward from previous years, and other taxes such as withholding and windfall taxes