The US President’s oil ambitions in Venezuela are great, but so are the risks. Your own interests may also come into play.
Jan 7, 2026, 7:16 amJan 7, 2026, 7:16 am
Niklaus Vontobel / ch media
The USA kidnapped Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from his own country. So far so spectacular. But what now? What does Donald Trump want from Venezuela?
Venezuela holds the largest oil treasure in the world: but the production facilities are run down.Image: keystone
The US President has already said all sorts of things about this. For example, that he is concerned with fentanyl, which comes into the USA from abroad and claims thousands of lives there. But fentanyl does not come to the USA via Venezuela, but via Mexico and is manufactured in China. Venezuela is a transit country for cocaine – but not an important one and not for the USA, but for Europe.
After the kidnapping of Maduro, Trump has now surprisingly openly said that it was about oil. He wants to get access to Venezuela’s immense oil reserves. They are the largest in the world, even larger than those in Saudi Arabia. At a press conference, Trump said his country would now rule Venezuela. “It won’t cost us anything because the money that comes out of the ground will be very significant.”
“We will rebuild the oil infrastructure, which will cost billions of dollars,” said Trump. “Our oil companies will cover these expenses directly. And they will be compensated for what they do.”
First shot, then thought about it
Can this calculation work? Apparently there is no long-planned plan behind it. “I have not spoken to US oil companies in the past few days,” said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to the Bloomberg news agency. “But we are pretty sure that the interest will be enormous.” Pretty sure. That sounds like a lot of improvisation.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.Image: keystone
What the magazine “Politico” learned from an industry representative familiar with the discussions also sounds like improvisation. There were “sporadic” contacts that were “received relatively cautiously” by the industry. Overall, the effort is “in its infancy at best” and feels “very much like a shoot-first, think-later exercise.”
However, it is not a task that Trump will be able to handle so casually. The British “Economist” speaks of “Trump’s big Venezuelan oil bet”. The country has the largest oil reserves in the world. “However, promoting them will be a pain.”
It’s going to be expensive, really expensive. Experts estimate it to be over $100 billion. That’s how much money is needed to get production back to where it was about 15 years ago. At that time, the US mining facilities in Venezuela were nationalized by former President Hugo Chávez and then run down. So now it would need over 100 billion – twice as much as all major US oil companies will have invested worldwide in 2024.
That’s a lot of money – especially if you have to spend it in a politically unstable country. “Bloomberg” quotes a former top manager from the Venezuelan oil industry who fled the country: “In order for oil companies to seriously think about such investments, a new parliament is needed. That’s not what’s happening now. Definitely not.” A new wave of repression is currently underway in Venezuela.
It wouldn’t be the first time that the US has failed
If US companies can then produce oil in Venezuela, the question is who will buy it. The world is currently being flooded with oil and global prices are close to five-year lows (see chart). The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects oversupply to continue until the end of the decade.
Former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.Image: EPA
If the USA fails, it wouldn’t be the first time. In the past, they have been unsuccessful with similar projects, as an oil expert explains to “Bloomberg”. In Libya, the dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011, also with the support of NATO air strikes. That was 14 years ago, but oil production is still 25 percent lower than back then. From the American perspective, things were also bitter in Iraq.
The USA overthrew the ruler Saddam Hussein in 2003 and then became heavily involved in the country’s leadership. Nevertheless, it took twelve years for oil production to return to pre-war levels. And the majority of the new production does not come from US companies – but from Chinese companies.
“Venezuelan oil production will probably not recover so quickly – even if the USA is now heavily involved,” says the oil expert in summary. “Violent overthrows of governments are rarely conducive to investment.”
In the USA, there is currently speculation about Trump’s motives. Some suspect that he wants to use foreign policy adventures to distract from his domestic weakness. In fact, his popularity ratings are currently abysmal. But if those were his thoughts, he would be ill-advised.
More and more of his voters are turning against him.Image: keystone
Military intervention in Venezuela is even more unpopular than Trump’s already very unpopular tariffs and health care cuts, writes a pollster. He relies on various surveys, including one that shows: Only 25 percent of registered voters support US military action in Venezuela, 63 percent are against it. Trump has actually long described himself as a “peace president”.
Employees sent home to sex offender
Others believe that Trump is at least happy that Venezuela is now dominating the headlines. Over the holidays, new facts emerged about Trump’s relationship with the late investment banker and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein died in prison in 2019.Image: keystone
The Wall Street Journal published an investigation on December 30th that Epstein was a frequent guest at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He was not a paying club member; Trump had given instructions to treat him like one.
If Epstein wanted to, he didn’t have to go to Mar-a-Lago himself. The club sent young female employees to its nearby villa for massages or manicures. The women warned each other that Epstein sometimes exposed himself at such appointments.
It only ended in 2003, after Mar-a-Lago sent an 18-year-old spa employee to Epstein and she complained to her superiors. Epstein pressured her into sex. He was arrested in 2006. Underage teenagers had reported to police that Epstein had paid them for sex.
Finally, other critics believe that Trump is ultimately only interested in power and money for himself. Everything else must be subordinate to this. Trump has already demonstrated power in Venezuela, but it remains to be seen whether his oil bet will work.
(aargauerzeitung.ch)