Fairies At The Bottom Of The Garden

Reporter: Analysts predict it could take several years before the Venezuela oil—

Trump: It’s going to go fast.

Reporter: When?

Trump: Analysts predicted a thing like this could never happen, too. Nobody ever thought it was possible. Remember? Russia was there. China was… pic.twitter.com/epazMDong2

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 31, 2026

Reporter: Analysts predict it could take several years before the Venezuela oil—

Trump: It’s going to go fast.

Reporter: When?

Trump: Analysts predicted a thing like this could never happen, too. Nobody ever thought it was possible. Remember? Russia was there. China was there. They're not there anymore, are they? You know who is there? U.S.A.

He has no clue what the technical obstacles are; starting with the fact that none of the major oil companies are showing any interest in this “deal” Trump thinks he has.

The problems of safety and infrastructure in Venezuela still exist. Venezuelan law says this kind of deal cannot be made. Trump can say “We’re the U.S., we can do what we want,” but the U.S. doesn’t own an oil company, and Marines are not roughnecks and petroleum engineers. The government doesn’t own the equipment, the government doesn’t have the expertise. Some estimates say it would require $1 trillion of investment to begin extracting the oil. That means oil companies would have to invest it, or at least partner with the U.S. Government. And how does that work?

Not soon enough to start refilling the SPR.

Trump on Venezuela: One of the things I want to do with all of that oil that we now have, I want to fill up the strategic reserves. We'll get that done fairly quickly. pic.twitter.com/y1aeTgyNSN

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 31, 2026

Making Venezuela productive is a decade long process, at least. It will require a huge private investment, and probably using the U.S. military as security forces. The latter just to get the former to make the investment.  There are reasons Venezuela has been producing about half the amount of oil it produced before. Those reasons have not changed. One other wrinkle: the 65 million barrels may be a chimera, a figment of Hugo Chavez’s imagination. 

Chavez is the source of the claim that Venezuela has 300 million proven reserves. Is that true, or is it a lie? More reasonable estimates are that Venezuelan reserves are 1/10th of that, at the low end; 1/2 of that at the high end. So Trump may have made a deal for twice as much oil as Venezuela actually has available.

It wouldn’t really be a surprise, would it?