Not every investor seems ready to plow capital back into the Venezuelan oil patch. If it were my choice, I wouldn’t rush in either.
“You have an ultra-risky jurisdiction with massively uncompetitive financial terms, in an area where the rule of law is far from certain, in an oil price environment that is challenging, and in a country where the infrastructure to produce said oil requires billions and billions and billions of dollars,” he said in an interview.
“It’s a fairly high conviction call that the appetite on the part of U.S. oil CEOs to re-enter Venezuela today is very, very low.”
Venezuela is way too risky at this time. Who wants to pour billions just to have the Demoncraps return. Said Demoncraps would have no issues sending Maduro back to resume his reign of terror.
It won’t be easy rebuilding Venezuela’s petroleum industry. Many of their biggest oil reservoirs have likely been ruined through mismanagement.
In 2003, Chavez fired many of the best petroleum engineers in PDVSA for political reasons. He then replaced them with political appointees who were profoundly inept. Under pressure from Chavez to increase production, they ramped up extraction rates for many of their reservoirs.
What’s wrong with that? If you extract oil from a reservoir at too great a rate, you destroy it. At first you get more oil, but then the pressure drops due to effects like coning and silt plugging, and you end up with only a fraction of the oil that you could have had at slower rates. Enhanced recovery techniques can mitigate it somewhat, but that is difficult and expensive.
In a story related to your nonsense … and I quote noted Oil expert Jimmy Carter;
” The oil and natural gas that we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are simply running out.… World oil production can probably keep going up for another 6 or 8 years. But sometime in the 1980’s, it can’t go up any more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that.”
Yeah … and the Permian basin had “run out of oil” … until it didn’t.
You don’t seem to know the difference between an oil basin and an oil reservoir, but thanks for your contribution.
You appear quite unfamiliar with fracking, horizontal drilling and other contemporary extraction methodology…
That would be the enhanced recovery techniques methods I referred to above. They help with a ruined reservoir, but they’re not a silver bullet.
And you should probably hold off with telling others what they know, when you clearly did not understand the original point being made.
The original point being made is pure speculation by a self-proclaimed expert – you. I understand your point perfectly well … you’re REACHING … yet again … to bash Trump.
Same ol, same ol.
Oh well … 3 more years of your tiresome schtick.
I was pointing out that getting the Venezuelan petroleum industry back on its feet was not going to be easy. The “Trump bashing” is entirely your invention. Dial back the paranoia.
And I was in the petroleum industry for over four decades, so yeah, I’m a bit of an expert.
I thought you were a statistician.
He can be an expert and a statistician at the same time. And a marmot, too. He contains multitudes. He’s a regular Walt Whitman.
Scientific computation was my more general expertise, statistics being part of that.
But unless they’re a teacher, a statistician has to apply their skills to some useful field. Mine was exploration geophysics.
Yes. I only ever applied my statistical skills to counting my toes in the bath, which is why I never argue over technical matters. Although, if you have strong opinions about the number of my toes, well, I’m ready for you.
Another factor that will slow Venezuela’s recovery is that large numbers of their skilled petroleum sector workers moved to places like Fort McMurray. Those guys have been there for more than 10 years now and have great careers in the oilsands, most of them won’t be going home.
Buying the DIP in Canadian Oil stocks? Let me remind you of what ‘some people’ told me when I announced my BUY BUY BUY of the TDS preprogrammed Trump Tariff Dip in the US stock market in early April 2025. I was WARNED … beware you aren’t “catching falling knives”
May I suggest investing in Canadian landlocked oil … is worse than catching falling knives … it’s cutting your own throat with those falling knives. Why? Net Zero. The war on fossil fuels. Indigenous grifters. And your communist PM who ain’t going anywhere for YEARS … only to be replaced by something WORSE.
Kenji, Trump is wrong, plain and simple.
My cat knows as much about the oil industry as he does.
Time will tell. And on that historic basis … Trump is usually right. I’ll stick with him until this entire operation goes bust.
But I fully understand your desperate defense of the Canadian oil patch. I understand
So you’re saying Trump knows more about oil production than the head of Exxon.
Sorry, that’s not credible.
Being a Trump cheerleader is fine.
I get it.
I like lots of things that he has done or is maybe trying to do – or just pissing people off – but certainly not everything, that’s for sure.
Willing or wanting something isn’t doing.
So … EXXON has no interest? Why? Because virtually ALL of the remaining Venezuelan oil infrastructure is owned by Chevron … and will be revitalized by Chevron? Meh. So they can just move on.
ExxonMobil’s oil contract in Guyana, signed in 2016, allows the company to retain 75% of the oil revenue until it recoups its costs, with the remaining profits shared with the Guyanese government. This agreement has faced criticism for its perceived unfavorable terms for Guyana, raising concerns about the country’s share of the oil wealth.
Yeah … EXXON is already exploiting neighboring Guyana … they don’t want to get spread too thin. Geeze.
I believe Trump knows that EXXON has other fish to fry
I’m willing to bet that by the end of Trump’s term, if we’re not already part of the United States, and the virtue signalling Liberals or a CPC led by virtue signalling PeePee are in power here, that those same investors that are skeptics of Venezuela now, will be investing way more in the oilfields of an American client state of Venezuela than the Chinese client state of Soviet Canuckistan