{"id":7007,"date":"2026-02-17T14:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T10:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deltafx.com\/blog\/?post_type=news&#038;p=7007"},"modified":"2026-02-17T14:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T10:34:12","slug":"trump-venezuela-oil-visit-plans","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/blog.deltafx.com\/en\/news\/trump-venezuela-oil-visit-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Energy Meets Politics, The Future of US-Venezuela Oil Ties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Donald Trump has signaled plans to visit Venezuela and tap into the country\u2019s vast oil reserves, the largest in the world. His remarks came after Venezuela passed new legislation allowing greater private and foreign investment in its oil sector. From Trump\u2019s perspective, this presents a major opportunity for U.S. energy companies and could help boost global oil supply.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, the reality on the ground is far more complicated. Venezuela\u2019s state oil company, PDVSA, has been severely weakened by years of underinvestment and mismanagement. Oil production has fallen sharply compared to a decade ago, and restoring infrastructure would require massive capital spending.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although Venezuela officially claims around 300 billion barrels in reserves, its export levels remain modest compared to countries like Saudi Arabia. Some analysts also question how much of those reserves are truly economically recoverable, especially given that earlier revisions were made when oil prices were much higher than they are today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The country\u2019s crude is also heavier and more sulfur-rich than many competitors\u2019, making it harder and more expensive to extract and refine. On top of technical challenges, Venezuela\u2019s prolonged economic crisis has driven millions of people \u2014 including skilled oil engineers \u2014 out of the country, leaving the sector short of expertise.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ultimately, even if U.S. firms have the technical capacity to rebuild Venezuela\u2019s oil infrastructure, the key question is economic viability. With oil prices hovering around $65 per barrel, large-scale investment may only make sense if prices rise and political as well as economic stability improves.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"template":"","news-categories":[296],"class_list":["post-7007","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry","news-categories-crude-oil-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltafx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/7007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltafx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltafx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltafx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltafx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.deltafx.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-categories?post=7007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}