October 25, 2025. An oil tanker chartered by Chevron is anchored in Lake Maracaibo. The United States has renewed the license of Venezuela's state oil company, PDVSA, to extract and export crude oil to North America. Credit line: Jose Isaac Bula U. Photojournalist / Alamy / Profimedia
Venezuela's oil industry would “make a lot of money” with the support of the United States, President Donald Trump said Saturday at a news conference confirming the capture of President Nicolas Maduro.
“We're going to send the big American oil companies, the biggest in the world, to invest billions of dollars, fix the badly damaged infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start bringing money to the country,” the US president said. He also stated that the Venezuelan oil industry has been “a total failure” for a long time. “They were pumping almost nothing compared to what they could have been pumping and what could have been going on there.”
Donald Trump appears to be banking heavily on US intervention in the oil industry to help transform Venezuela, an intention that could prove complicated and expensive, writes The New York Times.
How much oil does Venezuela produce?
Venezuela claims to have more than 300 billion barrels underground, the largest oil reserves in the world. In second place in the world ranking is Saudi Arabia, with approximately 267 billion barrels of proven oil.
The country faces major production and infrastructure problems, and much of its oil is difficult to extract due to its high density. Thus, Venezuela strives to produce about one million barrels per day, which is about 1% of world production.
Currently, production is well below the more than two million barrels per day that Venezuela was producing in the early 2010s.
The national oil company, known as PDVSA, lacks the capital and expertise to increase production. The country's oil fields are in a state of disrepair, suffering from “years of insufficient drilling, damaged infrastructure, frequent power outages and equipment theft,” according to a recent study by Energy Aspects, a research firm.
The United States has imposed sanctions on Venezuelan oil, which is now mainly exported to China.
The last American giant left in Venezuela
Chevron is the main Western oil company still operating in the country and produces about a quarter of Venezuela's oil. At the beginning of this century, when other companies were forced out, Chevron stayed, believing that the situation might eventually improve.
About half of Chevron's production is exported to the United States.
Chevron Corporation is an American multinational company, being the second largest energy company in the United States after ExxonMobil.
On Saturday, Chevron said it was trying to ensure the safety of its employees and operations in the country after Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were arrested and removed following US military action.
Donald Trump's plan promises a spectacular economic revival, but the success of this initiative now depends on the ability to attract new energy giants to a region marked by decades of instability. The next few months will be decisive.
