Experts say lifting production to former levels could take decades, and huge investment will be needed
The Venezuelan oil industry has been “a total bust” for a long time, according to the US President. After attacking Caracas and taking the country’s leader captive, Donald Trump promised to take control of Venezuela’s oil industry with the help of America’s biggest oil companies.
Venezuela’s beleaguered oil industry could “make a lot of money” with the might of the US behind it, Trump told the press, claiming that the new regime would invest billions to revive its fortunes.
Venezuela is believed to have the largest oil reserves of any country in the world. The exact reserves remain uncertain, but the state claims that they could be as large as 300bn barrels, easily surpassing those of Saudi Arabia. Other estimates suggest that Venezuela’s reserves of crude oil could represent about 17% of the world’s total.
But the South American country has only ever pumped a fraction of its potential production. When Venezuela’s former populist president Hugo Chávez rose to power in 1999, the country produced about 3.5m barrels of oil a day, making it one of the top 10 crude producers in the world at the time.
