Venezuela and Oil: Between Hegemony, Crisis, and Global Dispute

Introduction: the Venezuelan question beyond an isolated case

Venezuela is not merely a country in crisis; since the early twentieth century, it has been a decisive node in the geopolitics of oil. Holder of the world’s largest proven reserves and shaped by a history deeply molded by the petroleum industry, Caracas occupies a position of permanent friction between states, markets, and competing capitals. What is at stake is not only a national collapse, but the contemporary expression of a global system that governs through energy, financial, and geopolitical instability.

The long term: from PDVSA and Chavismo to energy dependence

Venezuela’s modern history is inseparable from its oil wealth and from the strategic position this wealth has placed it in on the regional and global chessboard. Since joining OPEC in 1960, the country began coordinating with other major producers over supply and pricing, consolidating itself as a central actor in the global energy market.

The nationalization of the oil industry in 1976, with the creation of the state-owned PDVSA, marked a turning point. Until then, foreign companies—largely American—dominated exploration and production. With nationalization, the Venezuelan state gained direct control over production and revenues, transforming oil into the structural axis of its economy, domestic politics, and external projection.

In the South American context, this orientation meant both initiatives of regional energy integration—such as Petrocaribe, launched in 2005, which offered oil under preferential conditions to Caribbean countries—and a growing rivalry with the sphere of U.S. influence, historically the main market for Venezuelan oil and, at the same time, the actor most sensitive to a Venezuela assertive in controlling its strategic resources.

The Chavista period, beginning in 1999, deepened this trajectory. Hugo Chávez centralized state control over PDVSA, raised the minimum state participation in joint ventures to 51%, and oriented economic policy toward a strongly rentier model in which more than 90% of exports became oil-based. This intensified dependence made the country’s macroeconomic fate even more sensitive to the international oil cycle.

At the same time, the explicit use of energy as an instrument of foreign policy—whether through Petrocaribe or through support for governments critical of U.S. policy—expanded the rift with Washington and heightened diplomatic tensions around sovereignty, regional influence, and resource control.

Domestically, the effects of this model were cumulative. Extreme specialization in oil, combined with underinvestment in other sectors, led to progressive deterioration of oil infrastructure, declining production, and the weakening of PDVSA’s technical base, both due to lack of maintenance and political decisions that compromised its operational capacity over decades.

The United States: oil, power, and energy sovereignty

The relationship of the United States with oil has always been less about scarcity than about control. Since the early twentieth century, U.S. foreign policy has been shaped by the need to secure continuous access to energy sources capable of sustaining its industrial expansion, financial hegemony, and global military capacity.

Despite holding significant reserves, the United States consolidated its position as the world’s largest oil consumer. This asymmetry—high consumption combined with partial dependence on imports—turned energy into a national security issue. Ensuring stable flows became as strategic as maintaining military bases or controlling maritime routes.

During the Cold War, this logic justified direct and indirect interventions in the Middle East and Latin America. Oil ceased to be merely an economic input and became part of the very architecture of the U.S.-led international order. The petrodollar system, consolidated in the 1970s, completed this arrangement by linking energy, currency, and financial power within a single circuit.

In the early twenty-first century, the shale oil revolution partially altered this scenario. Increased domestic production reduced relative dependence on imports, but did not eliminate the United States’ structural vulnerability to the global oil market. Price stability, inflation control, and macroeconomic balance remained conditioned by global energy dynamics.

It is in this context that the political project associated with Donald Trump must be understood. The discourse of “energy dominance” was not limited to domestic energy policy, but expressed a broader geoeconomic strategy: expanding internal production, loosening environmental regulations, and pressuring external producers to reduce costs, contain inflation, and reinforce the United States’ position as arbiter of global energy flows.

In parallel, this project maintained—and at times intensified—the use of sanctions, embargoes, and diplomatic pressure as indirect instruments of energy policy. The pursuit of autonomy never meant isolation, but capacity for intervention. Producing more does not eliminate the need to control the system; it merely shifts the center of dispute.

It is from this historical logic that U.S. interest in Venezuela must be read: not as an exceptional gesture, but as the continuation of a strategy in which energy, markets, and state power operate in an integrated manner.

Crisis, sanctions, and the fall in production in a global context

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Venezuela produced between 2.7 and 3 million barrels per day. Today, production fluctuates between 800,000 and 1 million barrels per day, representing less than 1% of the global oil market, despite its vast reserves.

This decline cannot be attributed solely to market cycles. It results from a deep entanglement between economic and energy sanctions, degradation of productive infrastructure, and the geopolitical logic that permeates the global energy system. Financial and commercial restrictions imposed by the United States—intensified over the past decade and escalated in 2025–26—limited Venezuela’s access to credit, technology, and markets, blocking international transactions and complicating the maintenance of fields and refineries.

Before the harshest sanctions, a significant portion of Venezuelan oil was directed to China through financing-linked agreements, functioning as a buffer against U.S. pressure. With the tightening of isolation, Venezuela’s response split between discounted exports to markets willing to assume risk and the adaptation of alternative logistical channels.

The capture of Nicolás Maduro in 2026 introduced a new element. The event opened space for direct negotiations between Washington and Caracas for exporting Venezuelan crude to U.S. refineries, signaling a strategic repositioning within the global energy chain.

This move reflects a clear political-economic calculation: reintegrating Venezuelan reserves into the market under U.S. influence may help reinforce domestic energy security, contain international prices, and limit the role of geopolitical rivals such as China and Russia. Major market players—such as Chevron, Vitol, and Trafigura—began negotiating licenses to mediate this reintegration, demonstrating the persistent interest of global financial capital.

Even so, full recovery of productive capacity will require massive investment, political stability, and reliable legal frameworks—challenges that have accompanied Venezuela for decades. The extraordinary wealth of its reserves remains, paradoxically, a simultaneous source of power and vulnerability.

Venezuela as a contemporary expression of the logic of crisis

Venezuela must be read against the backdrop of a deeply strained global energy and financial environment. Global oil demand exceeds 100 million barrels per day, concentrated mainly in large industrial and emerging economies such as the United States, China, and India, as well as import-dependent regions like Japan and much of the European Union. Despite the discourse of energy transition, oil remains a central input of the global economy.

This reality combines with historically high levels of debt. States operate under structural deficits, financial systems depend on constant liquidity, and monetary policy faces increasingly narrow limits. In this environment, cheap energy ceases to be merely a growth factor and becomes a condition of macroeconomic stability.

At this point, oil resumes its role as a geopolitical currency. Those who control reserves, production, or energy flows gain room to maneuver in a financially pressured world. Venezuela, although producing far below its potential today, holds a latent capacity to alter future balances in a market highly sensitive to expectations.

Recent energy crises—coordinated production cuts, logistical tensions, sanctions, and regional conflicts—function less as reactive responses and more as strategies of anticipatory repositioning. States and market agents operate not only to respond to crisis, but to position themselves ahead of it.

In this sense, the Venezuelan crisis is not merely an internal collapse or a regional exception. It expresses a broader logic: in a world that is indebted, energy-dependent, and geopolitically tense, control over strategic resources becomes an instrument of power. Crisis ceases to be merely consequence and becomes method.

Conclusion: crisis, power, and oil on the global chessboard

The capture of Nicolás Maduro in January 2026 marks a point of inflection. More than an isolated event, it relocates the Venezuelan crisis to the center of a broader geopolitical rearrangement, in which oil once again occupies an explicitly strategic position.

The political project of the Trump administration makes this movement visible by proposing the restructuring of Venezuela’s oil industry under U.S. influence, integrating its exports into global markets while limiting the maneuvering space of strategic rivals. Plans to export tens of millions of barrels to the United States reveal a deeply asymmetric logic of cooperation.

This repositioning occurs in a context of high global indebtedness, inflationary pressure, and the search for anticipation of future shocks. Controlling oil today is less about immediate volume and more about market power, macroeconomic stability, and crisis anticipation.

International reactions and domestic debates within the United States expose the ethical and political tensions of this process. Questions of sovereignty, legality, and intervention precedents intensify, showing that the struggle over oil continues to reorganize not only markets, but also norms and institutions.

Venezuela, therefore, does not close the discussion on oil and power—it expands it. Its trajectory confirms the central argument of this series: when crisis ceases to be exception and becomes method, oil ceases to be merely a resource and asserts itself as a vector of power, an instrument of anticipation, and a central piece in the engineering of global instability.