{"id":678746,"date":"2026-01-07T00:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T00:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/678746\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T00:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T00:03:10","slug":"trump-taking-drill-baby-drill-plan-to-venezuela-terrible-for-climate-experts-warn-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/678746\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump taking \u2018drill, baby, drill\u2019 plan to Venezuela \u2018terrible\u2019 for climate, experts warn | Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a>, by dramatically seizing Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> and claiming dominion over Venezuela<\/a>\u2019s vast oil reserves, has taken his \u201cdrill, baby, drill<\/a>\u201d mantra global. Achieving the president\u2019s dream of supercharging the country\u2019s oil production would be financially challenging \u2013 and if fulfilled, would be \u201cterrible for the climate\u201d, experts say.<\/p>\n

Trump has aggressively sought to boost oil and gas production<\/a> within the US. Now, after the capture and arrest of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, he is seeking to orchestrate a ramp-up of drilling in Venezuela, which has the largest known reserves of oil in the world \u2013 equivalent to about 300bn barrels, according to<\/a> research firm the Energy Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe oil companies are going to go in, they are going to spend money, we are going to take back the oil, frankly, we should\u2019ve taken back a long time ago,\u201d the US president said after Maduro\u2019s extraction from Caracas. \u201cA lot of money is coming out of the ground, we are going to be reimbursed for everything we spend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Venezuela\u2019s oil reserves<\/a><\/p>\n

US oil companies will \u201cspend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure \u2026 and start making money for the country\u201d, Trump added, with his administration pressing Venezuela\u2019s interim government to delete a law requiring oil projects to be half-owned by the state.<\/p>\n

Leading US oil businesses such as Exxon and Chevron have so far remained silent<\/a> on whether they would spend the huge sums required to enact the president\u2019s vision for Venezuela. But should Venezuela ramp up output to near its 1970s peak of 3.7m barrels a day \u2013 more than triple current levels \u2013 it would further undermine the already faltering global effort to limit dangerous global heating.<\/p>\n

Law enforcement officials move captured Venezuelan president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, out of the helicopter in New York on 5 January. Photograph: Adam Gray\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Even raising production to 1.5m barrels of oil a day from current levels of around 1m barrels would produce around 550m tons of carbon dioxide a year when the fuel is burned, according to Paasha Mahdavi, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This is more carbon pollution than what is emitted annually by major economies such as the UK and Brazil.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there are millions of barrels a day of new oil, that will add quite a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and the people of Earth can\u2019t afford that,\u201d said John Sterman, an expert in climate and economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

The climate costs would be especially high because Venezuela produces some of the world\u2019s most carbon-intensive oil<\/a>. Its vast reserves of extra-heavy crude<\/a> are particularly dirty, and its other reserves are \u201calso quite carbon- and methane-intensive\u201d, Mahdavi said.<\/p>\n

The world is close to breaching agreed temperature increase limits \u2013 already suffering<\/a> more<\/a> severe heatwaves<\/a>, storms<\/a> and droughts<\/a> as a result. Increased Venezuelan drilling would further lower global oil prices and slow the needed momentum towards renewable energy and electric cars, Sterman added.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf oil production goes up, climate change will get worse sooner, and everybody loses, including the people of Venezuela,\u201d he said. \u201cThe climate damages suffered by Venezuela, along with other countries, will almost certainly outweigh any short-term economic benefit of selling a bit more oil.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his first year back<\/a> in the White House, Trump has demanded the world remain running on fossil fuels<\/a> rather than \u201cscam<\/a>\u201d renewables and has threatened the annexation of Canada<\/a>, a major oil-producing country, and Greenland<\/a>, an Arctic island rich with mineral resources.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump returns to the White House on 4 January. Photograph: Andrew Leyden\/ZUMA Press Wire\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Critics have accused Trump of a fossil fuel-driven \u201cimperialism\u201d that threatens to further destabilize the world\u2019s climate, as well as upend international politics. \u201cThe US must stop treating Latin America as a resource colony,\u201d said Elizabeth Bast, the executive director of Oil<\/a> Change International. \u201cThe Venezuelan people, not US oil executives, must shape their country\u2019s future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patrick Galey, head of fossil fuel investigations at the climate and justice NGO Global Witness, said Trump\u2019s aggression in Venezuela is \u201cyet another conflict fuelled by fossil fuels, which are overwhelmingly controlled by some of the world\u2019s most despotic regimes\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo long as governments continue to rely on fossil fuels in energy systems, their constituents will be hostage to the whims of autocrats,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A complex economic picture<\/p>\n

Though the president\u2019s stated vision is for US-based oil companies to tap Venezuela\u2019s oil reserves for profit, making good on that promise may be complicated by economic, historical and geological factors, experts say.<\/p>\n

Oil companies may not be \u201ceager to invest what\u2019s needed because it will take a lot longer than the three years of President Trump\u2019s term\u201d, said Sterman.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a lot of risk \u2013 political risk, project risk,\u201d he said. \u201cIt seems very tricky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upping production is \u201calso just a bad bet generally\u201d, said Galey. \u201cAny meaningful increase in current production would require tens of billions of investment in things like repairs, upgrades and replacing creaking infrastructure,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s not even taking into account the dire security situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Venezuela\u2019s oil production has fallen dramatically from its historical highs \u2013 a decline experts blame on both mismanagement and US sanctions imposed by Barack Obama<\/a> and escalated by Trump. By 2018, the country was producing<\/a> just 1.3m barrels a day \u2013 roughly half of what it produced when Maduro took office in 2013, just over a third of what it produced in the 1990s, and about a third of its peak production in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Trump has said US companies will revive production levels and be \u201creimbursed\u201d for the costs of doing so. But the economics of that expansion may not entice energy majors, and even if they choose to play along, it would take years to meaningful boost extraction, experts say.<\/p>\n

An abandoned PDVSA facility in the Melones oilfield in El Tigre, Venezuela, on 15 October 2021. Photograph: Manaure Quintero\/Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Boosting Venezuela\u2019s oil output by 500,000 barrels a day would cost about $10bn and take roughly two years, according to Energy<\/a> Aspects. Production could reach between 2 and 2.5m barrels a day within a decade by tapping medium crude reserves, Mahdavi said. But returning to peak output would require developing the Orinoco Belt, whose heavy, sulfur-rich crude is far more costly and difficult to extract, transport and refine.<\/p>\n

Returning to 2m barrels per day by the early 2030s would require about $110bn in investment, according to Rystad Energy, an industry consultancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is going to take much more time and much more money, to be able to get at or close to maybe 3, 4 or 5m barrels a day of production,\u201d said Mahdavi.<\/p>\n

Increasing Venezuelan extraction amid booming US production may also be a hard sell. \u201cThe heavy Venezuelan crude that could be refined in US Gulf coast installations is likely going to undercut domestic producers, who until Trump kidnapped Maduro had been vocally supportive of sanctions on Venezuelan oil,\u201d said Galey.<\/p>\n

Some firms may be willing to \u201ceat that uncertainty\u201d because the US plans to provide companies with financial support to drill in Venezuela, said Mahdavi.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re willing to deal with the challenges \u2026 you are looking still at relatively cheap crude that will get you a higher profit margin than what you can do in the United States,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why they\u2019re still interested: it\u2019s way more expensive to drill in, say, the US\u2019s Permian Basin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some US oil majors may be more receptive to Trump\u2019s Venezuela strategy. Chevron, the only US company operating in the country, may be poised scale up production faster than its rivals. And ExxonMobil, which has invested heavily in oil production within neighboring Guyana, could benefit from the removal of Maduro, who staunchly opposes that expansion.<\/p>\n

Overall, however, it remains unclear<\/a> how US oil majors will respond to Trump\u2019s plans of regime change and increased oil extraction in Venezuela. What is much clearer is that any expansion would be \u201cterrible for the climate, terrible for the environment\u201d, said Mahdavi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump, by dramatically seizing Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and claiming dominion over Venezuela\u2019s vast oil reserves, has taken his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-678746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115850890939057235","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}