When the US detained Venezuela’s president in early 2026, Donald Trump promised to “unleash” the country’s oil and urged companies to invest $100 billion to develop it. Major oil firms were not impressed. Executives have publicly described Venezuela as effectively “uninvestible,” and when ExxonMobil echoed that assessment it drew an unusually sharp public rebuke from the former president.
That clash reflects a broader reality about today’s oil industry. The romantic image of oil companies as high-risk adventurers pursuing any new field for the next barrel belongs to an earlier era. Large international producers now prioritize predictable returns and manageable risk. They concentrate capital where they understand the geology, the markets and the regulatory environment—areas that promise steady, long-term profits—rather than politically volatile plays.
Research and industry planning show the majors are focusing their efforts on two main arenas: US shale and petrochemical expansion, especially in Asia. Low-cost shale gives refiners reliable feedstocks, while Asia’s manufacturing and population growth create durable demand for petrochemicals and plastics. Those markets offer dependable cash flows even as demand for conventional transport fuels faces long-term pressure from electrification and efficiency improvements.
Venezuela’s enormous crude reserves don’t automatically translate into commercially attractive projects. Crude varies widely: heavy, sulfur-rich Venezuelan oil requires complex refining and specialized upgrader technology to become fuels or petrochemical feedstocks. Venezuela has struggled to convert its raw barrels into usable products and often imports gasoline and chemicals despite producing large volumes of crude. The sophisticated refining technologies and technical services needed are concentrated in a handful of international firms; without them, much of Venezuela’s output cannot be readily absorbed by global refineries.
That technological gap means reserve size is a poor predictor of whether a country will export refined products or need imports. It also explains why Big Oil would consider Venezuelan investment only under very strong terms—contracts, guarantees or subsidies that transfer political and commercial risk to a government or to taxpayers. Asking public coffers to underwrite private gains is a politically fraught choice, and many argue those funds would be better spent accelerating the clean energy transition.
The bigger problem, from a societal perspective, is that oil majors are not directing capital toward the investments most needed to reduce emissions. Over recent years, many have scaled back low‑carbon spending while boosting investment in petrochemicals and other high‑emission businesses. Shifting that balance will require deliberate policy design—changing incentives so private capital flows to decarbonization projects rather than toward entrenched fossil assets.
That suggests a different strategy than trying to pry open a country’s oil by political fiat. Effective change will likely require multilateral coordination: policies that raise the effective cost of new fossil fuel production, limit the construction of new oil infrastructure, and create predictable, investible markets for low‑carbon alternatives. Without that policy architecture, huge reserves like Venezuela’s will remain geopolitically significant but commercially difficult to monetize in the way politicians sometimes promise.
Damian Tobin is a lecturer in international business at University College Cork. This piece is adapted from an article originally published by The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
