Was Maduro's Capture About Oil?

0:04Early Saturday morning, U.S. Special Forces captured Venezuela's President, Nicolas Maduro, along with his wife in a surprise military operation. After months of buildup at 2.01 a.m. local time today in Caracas, Venezuela, U.S. Delta forces slipped into the home of dictator Nicolas Maduro. U.S. President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that Maduro had been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the country. This comes after weeks of the U.S. ramping up pressure on the government of President Nicolas Maduro, including seizing two oil tankers and conducting deadly military strikes on alleged drug boat smugglers.

0:46The Trump administration has given several justifications for its actions against Maduro. Now, Maduro is facing charges for drug and gun offenses. For many years after his term as president of Venezuela, expired Maduro remained in power and waged a ceaseless campaign of violence, terror, and subversion against the United States of America. Through a translator in a New York court today, Maduro declared his innocence and said he is still the president of Venezuela. His wife also pleaded not guilty. But Trump said there was also another motivation for all this. Oil. Here he is yesterday on Air Force One.

1:31Total access. We need total access. We need access to the oil and to other things. Ultimately, he said something that wasn't done on any of the oil companies' bingo card, which was that the U.S. oil and gas companies were going to start plowing billions of dollars in investments in Venezuela.

1:55Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Monday, January 5th.

2:08Coming up on the show, what is going on with Venezuela's oil?

2:27Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. Here's our colleague Colin Eaton, who covers the oil industry. The government of Venezuela has estimated that reserves of oil in Venezuela are around 300 billion barrels. There have been other estimates that peg that number lower, but they seem to all agree that it's quite massive. Venezuela is actually estimated by some to have more oil than Saudi Arabia. But despite the country's vast and very valuable resources, the oil industry in Venezuela has struggled, especially since it was taken over by the government in the early 2000s, under then-president Hugo Chavez.

3:09So in 2006, 2007, Hugo Chavez's government nationalized the oil assets in Venezuela and essentially kicked out some major players, including ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. That was the start of a decline in the quality of Venezuela's oil production.

3:36Today, the only U.S. energy company with a significant presence in Venezuela is Chevron. Most of the country's oil is produced by the state-run Petróleos de Venezuela, or Pedevesa, which after decades of corruption and mismanagement, diminished the Venezuelan oil industry. Now, only a fraction of the country's estimated 300 billion barrels are actually coming out of the ground. So those massive reserve numbers are illusory in the sense that at the moment, Petavesa and Chevron and other companies haven't been extracting huge amounts of oil. So currently, Venezuela is producing about 900 ,000 barrels a day.

4:20That's about 1 % of global oil production on a daily basis. For decades, the U.S. has been at odds with Venezuela, including the Trump administration, starting in his first term. Here's former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announcing sanctions. By sanctioning Maduro, the United States makes clear our opposition to the policies of his regime and the support for the people of Venezuela. In 2019, the U.S. imposed a near-total economic embargo on the country and on PDVSA, preventing it from selling crude oil legally to the U.S. It was a big moment for oil markets, which had gotten a lot of heavier crude from Venezuela.

5:07The refineries in the Gulf Coast were scrambling to find other sources of crude. So the Trump administration put those sanctions in place as part of its sort of maximum pressure campaign in an effort to pressure Maduro to leave power.

5:29The Biden administration loosened those sanctions. But during his second term, Trump focused on Venezuela again, as several of the administration's priorities converged there. Maduro was the thorn in the side of the U.S. on multiple fronts. He resisted taking back plane loads of Venezuelan migrants. He was alleged to be directly involved with drug cartels. And he held on to power despite losing an election in 2024. Some in Trump's inner circle, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have also been pushing for regime change. Marco Rubio, Mike Walls, other U.S. lawmakers, particularly from Florida, have been adamant that Maduro is a threat not only to the Venezuelan people, but to surrounding countries.

6:22So last year, the Trump administration started dialing up the pressure once again and pushing Maduro to step down and go into exile. It started with multiple strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean. Today, U.S. forces launched what a defense official calls a precision strike against a vessel from Venezuela. It's the fourth attack of its kind. The U.S. military has carried out a 20th strike on a boat accused of transporting drugs. Officials say this latest attack brings the total since early September to at least 115 deaths across 35 boat strikes. Then, last month, the Trump administration expanded its pressure campaign to include oil tankers.

7:05An elite Coast Guard team rappelling out of helicopters onto the deck of an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast, executing a seizure warrant, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi. It seized a tanker last month called the Skipper. That quickly sort of showed that the administration was doing everything it could to cut off revenue streams that were supporting Nicolas Maduro and his stay in power. Secretly, in the background, the US was also planning something more brazen. The capture and extradition of the Venezuelan president. How American oil companies are reacting is next.

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8:58is in custody in New York. What is Trump's plan now, as far as we know, when it comes to Venezuela and the oil industry there? So President Trump sort of laid out a vision. We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country. However, details have been scarce. It's unclear how any of this would work. But prior to Saturday, our understanding is when we reported this that there weren't any talks between U.S. oil and gas companies and the Trump administration about the strikes.

9:50Chevron said in a statement Saturday that it's focused on the safety of its employees and the integrity of its assets in the country. A spokesman for ConocoPhillips said the company is monitoring developments in Venezuela and that it would be premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments. Call-in sources in the oil industry say there'll be some reluctance to jump into Venezuela, in part because there's so much uncertainty about the country's leadership. The oil industry is saying that they don't know what Venezuela's government is going to look like tomorrow. They need sort of a long, stable environment to invest in.

10:29So while President Trump has sort of come out and said that these oil companies are going to invest a lot of money in Venezuela, the details are unclear and they may, we may hear some answers this week as the administration continues to talk about this with oil companies. Trump has, for now, cautiously embraced Maduro's vice president, Delce Rodriguez, after advisers told him she might be more open to working with U.S. companies. She's been sworn in as interim leader. Making matters more complicated is the fact that the type of oil that's in Venezuela is heavier and more expensive to pump. And when oil prices are lower, like they are now, there's less of an economic incentive to invest.

11:20How much do oil companies stand to gain? Potentially, if they do get into Venezuela. So I guess what they would gain is a foothold in a place with massive reserves. But they also have big considerations before they can make those investments. First of all, an investment on that scale would start seeing returns in five to ten years from now. What does this mean for Chevron, the only U.S. company that has continued to operate there? Even for Chevron, it's going to be tough to justify new investments in Venezuela at this juncture. The country is still reeling from recent instability. It might be a long time before the U.S.

12:10and the Venezuelan government sort of mete out a method of getting these companies to reinvest in Venezuela.

12:23What's your takeaway from all this? Like, what should we make of this? My takeaway was the Trump administration was essentially done dealing with Maduro and the president wants the oil industry to go back. He wants to see an economic benefit from this policy. There are a lot of challenges, though, to making it work and figuring that out will be in the realm of the oil industry going forward. On Sunday night, Trump again said the U.S. was calling the shots in Venezuela. He said, quote, we're in charge.

13:11That's all for today, Monday, January 5th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Kejal Villas, David Huberti, and James Finelli.

13:26Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.