Why Trump’s Oil Imperialism Might Be a Tough Sell for Actual Oil Companies

Over the weekend, the U.S. military entered Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife. Maduro will now face drug and gun charges in New York, and some members of the Trump administration have described the operation as a law enforcement mission.

President Donald Trump has taken a different tack. He has justified the operation by asserting that America is going to “take over” Venezuela’s oil reserves, even suggesting that oil companies might foot the bill for the broader occupation and rebuilding effort. Trump officials have told oil companies that the U.S. might not help them recover lost assets unless they fund the American effort now, according to Politico.

Such a move seems openly imperialistic, ill-advised, and unethical — to say the least. But is it even possible? On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob talks to Rory Johnston, a Toronto-based oil markets analyst and the founder of Commodity Context. They discuss the current status of the Venezuelan oil industry, what a rebuilding effort would cost, and whether a reopened Venezuelan oil industry could change U.S. energy politics — or even, as some fear, bring about a new age of cheap fossil fuels.

Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University. Jesse is off this week.

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Here is an excerpt from our conversation:

Robinson Meyer: First of all, does Venezuela have the world’s largest hydrocarbon reserves — like, proven hydrocarbon reserves? And number two, let’s say that Trump has made some backdoor deal with the existing regime, that these existing issues are ironed ou to actually use those reserves. What kind of investment are we talking about on that end?

Rory Johnston: The mucky answer to this largest reserve question is, there’s lots of debate. I will say there’s a reasonable claim that at one point Venezuela — Venezuela has a lot of oil. Let’s just say it that way: Venezuela has a lot of oil, particularly the Orinoco Belt, which, again, similar to the oil sands we’re talking about —

Meyer: This is the Orinoco flow. We’re going to call this the Orinoco flow question.

Johnston: Yeah, exactly, that. Similar to the Canadian oil sands, we’re talking about more than a trillion barrels of oil in place, the actual resource in the ground. But then from there you get to this question of what is technically recoverable. Then from there, what is economically recoverable? The explosion in, again, both Venezuelan and Canadian reserve estimates occurred during that massive boom in oil prices in the mid-2000s. And that created the justification for booking those as reserves rather than just resources.

So I think that there is ample — in the same way, like, Russia and the United States don’t actually have super impressive-looking reserves on paper, but they do a lot with them, and I think in actuality that matters a lot more than the amount of technical reserves you have in the ground. Because as we’ve seen, Venezuela hasn’t been able to do much with those reserves.

So in order to, how to actually get that operating, this is where we get back to the — we’re talking tens, hundreds of billions of dollars, and a lot of time. And these companies are not going to do that without seeing a track record of whatever government replaces the current. The current vice president, his acting president — which I should also note, vice president and oil minister, which I think is particularly relevant here — so I think there’s lots that needs to happen. But companies are not going to trip over themselves to expose themselves to this risk. We still don’t know what the future is going to look like for Venezuela.

Mentioned:

The 4 Things Standing Between the U.S. and Venezuela’s Oil

Trump admin sends tough private message to oil companies on Venezuela

Previously on Shift Key: The Trump Policy That Would Be Really Bad for Oil Companies

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Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.