Trump’s Venezuela oil plans: Major undertaking, big challenges

Key takeaways:

• An 18-month timeline is extremely short for conventional oil projects, which require long term capital and multi year delivery, making Trump’s ambitions for Venezuela unrealistic

• Venezuela’s oil potential is real, but investors will weigh high costs and above ground risks such as infrastructure gaps, policy shifts, and contractual terms

• Sanctions outcomes matter, since a move from opaque trading to open markets could add some barrels and push prices lower, without reshaping the global balance

• China could lose access to discounted Venezuelan barrels, but lower global prices from higher supply would still benefit the world’s largest crude importer

• Oil prices have stayed broadly stable because supply and demand have not shifted yet, while the bigger change is a higher political risk premium tied to escalation