Donald Trump has asked for at least $100bn (£75bn) in oil industry spending for Venezuela, but received a lukewarm response at the White House as one executive warned the South American country was currently “uninvestable”.
Bosses of the biggest US oil firms who attended the meeting acknowledged that Venezuela, sitting on vast energy reserves, represented an enticing opportunity.
But they said significant changes would be needed to make the region an attractive investment. No major financial commitments were immediately forthcoming.
Whaaaaaaaat? Dragging the dirtiest type of oil out of the ground from a country still resisting invasion isn’t going to be cost effective?
So when he was on air force one and said that he’d spoken to the oil companies before the invasion. That was obviously a lie.
Is brain really is mush isn’t it.
More if a gelatinous goo, somewhere between the consistency of loose slime and snot.
This podcast episode explains very well Exxon’s logic: https://pca.st/episode/d7084179-677a-4c82-ac90-c53cf28110c4
I never thought I would be on an oil company’s side in a discussion in my life.
Who knew the guy who bankrupted a casino despite his daddy giving him millions to run it was bad at business?
He’s so bad at business that he doesn’t realise that companies won’t want to oversaturate the market and lower their margins. This is a concept of 12-year-old should be able to understand.
Yeah, this is why every article that mentions Venezuelas huge oil reserves needs to also mention it is the costliest/ lowest margin oil too. Not all oil reserves are the same, the Saudis being able to pull a barrel out for $15 and sell it for $80 is a way different position then Venezuela pulling a barrel out for $60 and selling it for $70.
It is probably just part of the media manufacturing consent for regime change: “look how resource rich Venezuela is and how poor the people are, it must be because the evil Maduro regime” completely ignoring sanctions. Yeah mismanagement is part of the reason Venezuela is doing poorly but even if they were run perfectly with no corruption they still wouldn’t be living like the Saudis.
Yep. Canada’s tar sands are similar. Low grade tar that can be sold for cheap or upgraded for profit. Either way though even without counting labour standards and wages it costs twice as much to pull it out of the ground and we’ll sell it for half as much
Sure, invest $100bn into an unstable country chasing a dying technology at the behest of a corrupt regime. Even for oil companies, Venezuela is too hot to touch.
Not to mention there’s a solid chance the next president will basically dedicate their career to undoing Trump’s BS, so there’s no guarantee you’ll get more than a few years of revenue.
Even if Trump hangs around as a dictator there’s still no point investing in Venezuela. It’s not as if there is even a global oil shortage so why would you want to build more infrastructure.
Trump is looking at fighting a war in Venezuela, Greenland and at home. How could anybody possibly think this regime is ever going to be anything near stable?
If we have another election at all
Holy crap, did you invent this idea? I’ve never heard anyone say anything like this before.
Holy crap, did you invent sarcasm? I’ve never heard anybody say anything like this before.
Judging from the anger over ICE and anti-american administration if Trump tries to stop the election there will be riots and strikes.
I lost count of the many “if x happens we’ll act” excuses…
I have yet to see any evidence that Trump doing anything would cause riots and strikes. The American people are too pacified to defend themselves.
We’ve already had a few riots.
Technically we’ve also had Jan 6th, but I know that’s not what you mean.
You think Trump is immortal?
It’s nice to be hopeful. I’m not holding my breath though.
“now is a time for healing so we are going to hold no one accountable and in a few years when the fascist are back we can do this again”
It goes beyond that. Venezuela’s oil is heavy crude(if I understood correctly) which is difficult to process and requires specialized refineries in which US oil companies have not invested in.
EDIT: See comments below for corrections and more context.
A few months ago Trumpist billionaire Paul Singer bought Citgo, the former U.S.-based arm of Venezuela’s state-run oil company. Citgo owns three Gulf Coast refineries custom-built to process Venezuelan crude, refineries that have suffered from the U.S. embargo on imports of that crude. If Trump lifts that embargo, Singer will receive a huge windfall. But this windfall will have nothing to do with reviving Venezuelan production.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-emperors-new-oil-wealth
Top notch information. Thanks.
It’s largely the same as Canadian and Mexican oil, so the infrastructure is very much in place.
It gives Trump an opening to pressure/annex Canada and Mexico, if Venezuela can make up the difference (which they can’t, yet).
It’s true that the infrastructure is already in place but it is important to understand that it is not simple infrastructure, and with a few exceptions, it is already pretty much fully utilized by Canadian and Mexican heavy crude/bitumen so it’s not like they can just double their capacity and start processing Venezuela too. You’re right about giving an opening to pressure Canada/Mexico though.
But it’s questionable if there’s really much upside for the US on the financial side. The opportunity to pressure is definitely there, but more pressure isn’t going to get blood out of a stone. Venezuelan oil will still have costs associated with it, and Canadian and Mexican oil is already really cheap.
The oil itself may be essentially free the way they’re stealing it with military force, but It’s not going to be cheap to build up Venezuela’s production infrastructure and it’s not going to be cheap to transport the oil stateside, and both Mexico and Canada already have all that infrastructure in place too, and already give a huge discount to the US since they have nowhere else to affordably sell or refine their oil as they have effectively no indigenous refining capacity for heavy crude and few other export options. During a few of the oil price plummets around Covid, Canadian oil (Western Canadian Select) was actually selling for negative prices, Canada was paying the US to take it off their hands and refine it for them. With global oil prices already trending relatively low, it’s going to be hard for oil from Venezuela to realistically compete with situations like that.
The most believable explanation that I’ve heard is that this is not really about directly stealing Venezuela’s oil reserves as much as it is about denying it to Russia and China, and maybe securing them in case of some future conflict. And that, I think, makes an awful lot of sense geopolitically as distasteful as I personally find the whole affair.
So: very specialized, expensive equipment in a small number of locations. What could go wrong?
While I’m not saying our oil dependency is good, calling it a dying technology is a bit silly. Even electric cars have lots of oil in them, nevermind the phone this is being typed from or my carpets or any other number of daily items. I do wonder if some of the unrest around the world these days is partially out of a fear that theres only so much oil…
An article i read states that with China and India fully investing into EV technologies, we could see oil demand peak in 2030 and:
“The tragedy is that we’re fighting over barrels that look huge on spreadsheets but shrink rapidly when confronted with physics, economics and time,” said Guy Prince, the head of energy supply research at the thinktank.
While the US is a net exporter of oil too.
Trump: anyone want to buy some stereos? They fell of a truck.
Oil companies: ehh….
So basically, it looks like he committed an international crime for oil and then won’t even get the oil. No one should be surprised, I guess. Incompetence is the only constant.
I’m starting to see how he managed to bankrupt the casino. It’s because he won’t stop committing pointless crimes that don’t in fact benefit him in any way.
The oil execs are saying it’s “uninvestable” precisely because they know how incompetent Trump is.
This actually sounds more like they want American troops to turn Venezuela into not-Venezuela… THEN they would feel safe investing.
Trump puts troops in Venezuela.
Oil execs: ya know, it’s mighty difficult to ensure security using only boats, it’d be better if we were in control all the way from the US via land.
“Who knew oil could be so complicated?!” - Orange Pirate
Orange Pedo-pirate
Bailout time… Trump will give them the money to invest and make them whole from previous losses
You know damn well big oil put him up to this.
It’s smoke and mirrors
What a fucking doofus Trump is. He couldn’t consider the cost of his actions - and the likely fallout of the same - if his life depended on it.
A competent State Department would have insisted on this kind of discussion before sending in SEAL Team Six
A competent state department wouldn’t send in SEAL Team Six into a sovereign country they are not at war with.
Counterpoint: All of 20th and 21st American history outside of WWI and WWII. The US never declared war on Iraq or Afghanistan.
I think that speaks to my point about competence
Correct. Previous competent State Departments have sent in spooks (CIA) into sovereign countries they are not at war with.
When you account for inflation, oil prices today are in line with oil prices in the early 2000s. The price is too low, and the risk is too high for massive infrastructure spending that would extract more oil from Venezuela to be worth it.
Possibly, green energy technologies are now on a trajectory to overtake fossil fuels altogether - and they are already a factor in driving the price of fossil fuels (and therefore the profitability of many wells and mines) down substantially. If that happens, the long term value of Venezuela’s oil reserves, without suitable infrastructure already built for extraction, could be close to zero.
In line with small government ideals, the best thing to do is let companies decide whether and how much to invest, but that won’t be a headline worth showing off. So Trump is trying to make $100B happen, and believes that that (alone) will restore the Venezuelan economy to the way it was.
Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about restoring the Venezuelan economy. He’s an extortionist and a robber, not a caring person.
Why would they? It’s a win-win. They either get significant tax payer money invested on their behalf, or the oil stays off market keeping their prices high.
Prices aren’t even that high, crude oil’s price has been on a steady downward March since the high in 2022
But taking Venezuelan oil offline might help bring global prices up, which would help Russia, which doesn’t turn a profit unless prices are high.
This is exactly it, it’s a shakedown and Trump and the party of fiscal responsibility will see to it that yet more corporations get hundreds of billions in government largess. But boy, they sure extracted that 1 bil from PBS, so I guess they’re on point.
Yep the oil in Venezuela is not high grade so it’s not profitable in the short term even if long term control is important for oil based business.
How is Dorito Benito going to stop the Venezuelans from taking every thing back the minute it’s convenient. He would have to put boots on the ground.
Companies have usually avoided morally dubious actions in worlds spotlight, because it deters investors.
Not sure if anyone wants to touch Trumps fresh smelly turd… at least directly and visibly.
So, correct me if I’m wrong, but is anyone else thinking that the entire end-goal of this is to have the Venuzuela money handled directly by his administration so that he can keep his shit going when Congress finally (hopefully) cuts his purse strings?
The one thing that the government hasn’t been able to change is the fact that Congress controls the money, not him. Seems to me that Venuzuela Oil is his play at getting a private fund without them.
It is pretty crazy, he cut himself a $230 million dollar check that he said the government owed him and didn’t even have to report it. He has unilaterally given foreign governments billions of dollars and bribed US interests with billions as well. He also seems to think the hundreds of billions of tariff money is his to do what he pleases with as well.
Truly this administration has broken so many laws, ethics, norms, etc. that they will go down in history as the most corrupt and criminal administration of all time.
Edit: obligatory so far
