From Washington Post

January 3, 2026

Warning:  This is a long article with big words and ideas that require rational thought.  Trump supporters likely will not understand it.

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The big obstacles to Trump’s plan for a Venezuelan oil windfall

There’s a familiar ring to President Donald Trump’s plan to send U.S. energy giants to Venezuela to use the wealth generated from rekindling long-stalled oil production to stabilize that country and cement American energy dominance: Similar ambitions accompanied the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The quick riches promised did not materialize there, as firms grappled with years of political turmoil and security threats, struggled to negotiate workable contract terms and confronted vexing infrastructure inadequacies. Venezuela may not be any easier, industry analysts warn.

69“One of the clear lessons from Iraq — and it is not unique to Iraq — is that you need to have stability and be able to assess risk before you can start production,” said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm. Until then, he said, companies may not be enthusiastic about making the billions of dollars in investments required in Venezuela.

It’s unclear which firms Trump was referencing at a news conference Saturday morning, when he said: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go and spend billions of dollars to fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure.”

Chevron, which operates there now, declined to comment on plans.

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips exited the country and saw their assets seized after refusing to meet the terms of Venezuela’s government nearly two decades ago. ExxonMobil did not respond to requests for comment.

“It would be premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments,” ConocoPhillips spokesman Dennis Nuss said in an email.

But the appeal is clear. Venezuela has one of the biggest oil reserves in the world, estimated at 300 billion barrels.

“Every major oil company in the world and some of the smaller ones will look closely at this because there are very few places on Earth where you could increase production so much,” said Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin American Energy Program at Rice University. “But first you need political stability and clarity.”

He said restoring peak oil production there would cost up to $100 billion and take about a decade. And that is assuming there is enough political stability for companies to operate unencumbered during that entire period.

There are other obstacles. The oil in Venezuela is a heavy form of crude that is more difficult to process and carries a heavier carbon footprint than oil pumped elsewhere. Venezuela’s power grid is on the brink, creating an uncertain outlook for oil production, which requires massive amounts of energy. Also, Russian and Chinese firms partnered with Venezuela after U.S. companies left the nation, complicating the reestablishment of U.S. firms.

Returning to Venezuela has hardly been a central talking point of U.S. oil companies.

In this era of relativly low oil prices and uncertainty about how robust future demand will be amid an on-again, off-again global energy transition from fossil fuels, firms are anxious about reinvesting tens of billions of dollars more in pumping in Venezuela absent assurances that their investments would be secure for at least a decade, according to industry analysts.

Trump’s removal of Venezuela’s leader and plan to put the U.S. in charge of the country for now does not ensure that, despite his sweeping promises.

“We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us,” Trump said. “The oil companies are going to go in. They’re going to spend money there that we’re going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago. A lot of money is coming out of the ground. We’re going to get reimbursed for all of that. We’re going to get reimbursed for everything that we spend.”

Today, the nation’s oil production is a fraction of what it could be and its infrastructure is badly frayed because of domestic turmoil, the departure of foreign oil companies and related international sanctions. The nation is pumping a mere 1 million barrels of oil per day, less than 1 percent of global output. That is also less thana third of its peak production under the Hugo Chávez regime and a quarter of what experts say it is capable of generating.

That oil has largely been purchased byChina.

The only American company operating in Venezuela is Chevron, with its production constrained by considerable Venezuelan government restrictions.

“Chevron remains focused on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets,” said a statement from Bill Turenne, a company spokesman. “We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.”

While acknowledging that firms have reason to be reticent, Monaldi, of Rice University, pointed to forecasts showing Venezuelan oil could be crucial to meet rising global demand over the next decade.

But none of that can happen overnight.

“Oil companies do not operate in a vacuum and we are years from significant volume increase,” said Pedro Burelli, a critic of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro now living in the United States, and a former board member of the Venezuelan state oil company. “Regulations and contracts matter as U.S. oil companies are publicly traded companies with shareholders who will demand rational investment decisions.”

Oil companies have even been reluctant to increase their rig counts here, despite Trump’s repeated calls for more drilling, amid demand uncertainty and dropping market prices. U.S. oil production soared during the Biden administration, but the pace of growth has slowed since Trump returned to office, with some forecasts predicting declines this year.

Book said oil companies will be looking to sign contracts that they are confident will be honored for the long-term, and there is no government in Venezuela that right now can honor such a contract.

“Before you make all these big investments and start running operations, you also need a stable country with reliable electricity, functioning ports and an available workforce,” he said. “A lot of factors go into pulling this off.”

Trump may have further complicated the outlook for U.S. oil firms returning to Venezuela by declaring that he does not believe the popular opposition leader there, María Corina Machado, commands the respect to run the country immediately following Maduro’s ouster.

Machado has been a vocal proponent of helping U.S. firms re-establish operations in Venezuela. One of her energy advisers, Evanan Romero, a former Venezuelan oil executive and government minister, stressed in an interview that if the oil firms wish to return, “we will welcome them.”

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READ MORE

Donald Trump’s great Venezuelan oil gamble

The country has the world’s largest petroleum reserves. Getting them out of the ground will be tortuous

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The big obstacles to Trump’s plan for a Venezuelan oil windfall

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/01/03/venezuela-oil-production-us-companies/

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Trump claims the U.S. will ‘run’ Venezuela. What’s the plan?

The raid to nab Maduro was brilliantly executed. The aftermath could get extremely messy.

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Seizing Maduro? Quick. Fixing Venezuela’s oil production? Years.

A nation wrecked by Chávez’s and Maduro’s socialist mismanagement has a long recovery road ahead.

 

Nothing good will come from Trump’s attack on Venezuela.

Details later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ESSAY:  THE END OF AMERICAN “CAPITALISM”

As the decisive political year 2026 begins, the source of our national angst is becoming clearer.  It’s nothing less than the collapse of American capitalism.  Our peculiar brand of extreme, unregulated, self-promotional, science- and engineering-free, over-the-top capitalism is collapsing of its own weight, not to mention its many contradictions.  The discontents and depredations of President Donald Trump’s incipient despotisms are mere symptoms of that dread disease.

Before you click out, consider this.  China, which will clearly own our new twenty-first century, is now, by far, the world’s foremost capitalist nation.  It’s a robust example of state capitalism.  There a vast array of private firms has free reign to produce things and make money, subject to strict regulation by the state in its interest.  That simple subjection to government control makes all the difference.

China’s great industrial firms are beating ours, Europe’s and even some in Japan in productivity, price and more recently quality.  They are nearly all privately owned and privately run and therefore “capitalistic” in every sense.  In this respect, they resemble the robust private firms of the postwar US.

READ THE FULL ESSAY AND SUPPORTING MATERIAL HERE.

It doesn’t have to be this way

I heard that phrase briefly, far too briefly during the last election.

I suggest that should be the main platform for the Democratic Party for the midterms and beyond.

Thom Hartmann has pointed this out often and it was my experience too. My father had a middle class job. My mother didn’t work. Yet my father was able to buy & own a house. Every 4or 5 years he would buy a new car. His health care benefits from having a union job were excellent. NEVER had to worry about hospitals or any health care costs.. A two week vacation every year. I realize that I was fortunate, but this was the experience for a hell of a lot of people in the middle class. Now that middle class is shrinking at an alarming rate. Two people working full time cannot afford what on person used to be able to afford.

A huge percentage of our population has never experienced this and has no knowledge that this actually existed in our country.

This all began to disappear with the election of Reagan and the Supreme Court allowing more and more money into election.   Billionaires didn’t always control our government.

IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY should be # 1 on the Democratic platform. We can and should not ever go back, but we should move forward with the best of what we had helping to guide us.

President Trump announced Wednesday that he is pulling National Guard troops out of Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, for now.

District judges and appeals courts have issued various rulings about the legality of the deployments. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block a lower court’s decision barring Trump’s use of the National Guard in Chicago.

“We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact,” Trump wrote in a TruthSocial post. “Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago were GONE if it weren’t for the Federal Government stepping in. We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time!”

Trump went on to call the Democratic leaders of the cities and states where he deployed troops “greatly incompetent.”

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This is what happens when we oppose Trump and stand up to him:  He loses and runs away.

Opposing Trump and resisting him always works.  Bargaining with him never works.  

RESIST.  OPPOSE.  DO NOT COMPLY.