US faces big challenges in trying to unlock ‘tremendous wealth’ from Venezuela’s long-neglected oil industry
Donald Trump has laid claim to billions of dollars’ worth of Venezuelan crude this week, which at a stroke has handed the world’s biggest consumer of oil up to 50m barrels – but his ambitions are far greater.
The White House said Venezuela would be “turning over” the nearly $3bn (£2.3bn) of crude stranded in tankers and storage facilities before it is sold on the international market and after that the US plans to control all the country’s oil sales “indefinitely”.
For the Trump administration, the seizure is the first move in taking control of Venezuela’s vast crude reserves, estimated to represent almost a fifth of the proven reserves on Earth, in a push to cut the oil price to $50 a barrel.
But experts have been quick to point out that the crude cargo grab could be the last easy win for the president, with no quick or cheap fix to reignite the country’s oil production. Here are some of the biggest challenges standing in the way of his South American gamble to unlock “tremendous wealth” from a neglected industry.
