Oil

Joe Lancaster | 1.6.2026 10:15 AM

Over the weekend, American military forces arrested Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife during an operation in the capital city of Caracas. While the action was nominally undertaken to prosecute Maduro and his wife for "narcoterrorism," President Donald Trump soon added another potential justification: accessing the country's generous oil reserves.

If this is Trump's plan, it will be easier said than done.

"We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country," Trump said in remarks after the raid.

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world, outstripping the U.S. and even Saudi Arabia, but it refines and exports considerably less than either country. In part, this is because Venezuela

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