Getting hold of Venezuela’s immense oil reserves seems like a “bargain.” It’s actually an engineering nightmare.

The geopolitical board has been blown up with the establishment of the “Donroe Doctrine.” According to energy analyst Javier Blasthis movement seeks to consolidate an energy empire from Alaska to Patagonia to control 40% of world production. Trump has not hesitated, making it clear that his objective is oil, recovering “stolen” assets and executing a lightning reconstruction led by American oil companies.

However, Washington’s optimism clashes with technical reality. Analysts consulted by The Wall Street Journal They warn that there will not be an immediate miracle in the wells. In fact, the market has stopped fearing shortages and has begun to discount a future saturation of crude oil that is already pushing prices down.

It’s not “black gold”, it’s asphalt. The narrative of easy success collides with geology. Venezuela It has 303,000 million barrels of proven reserves, but the vast majority is located in the Orinoco Belt and is extra-heavy crude oil. Unlike light oil, it is viscous, dense and does not flow naturally; It is more like tar than fuel.

Added to the geological complexity is an alarming degradation of quality. A Reuters investigationbased on internal PDVSA documents, reveals that refiners in India (Reliance) and China (CNPC) have canceled orders or demanded drastic discounts because the crude oil arrives “dirty”, with excessive levels of water, salt and metals. These impurities corrode distillation towers and refining equipment, making processing an expensive and risky process. According to the researcher Luisa Palaciosthe country does not even produce the diluents (gasoline) necessary to transport this crude oil through pipelines, which forces it to depend on imports or inefficient mixtures.

Low profitability. Despite the magnitude of the reserves, Venezuelan oil is far from being a profitable business. Its current low profitability is based on three critical pillars that any investor must consider. First of all, geology works against us. According to Forbesextracting this heavy crude oil requires massive and constant technical investment in steam injection and “upgrading” plants to transform the bitumen into a marketable product. Without this expensive technology, the resource is simply inaccessible.

Added to this are the structural discounts in the market. As Al Jazeera explainsDue to its high density and sulfur content, this crude oil always trades below markers such as Brent or WTI. With a barrel that could fall to 50-60 dollars in 2026, the profit margin for Venezuela would be reduced to a minimum.

The bottleneck: logistics. As an analysis in Bloomberg points outthe infrastructure is literally in ruins because loading a supertanker now requires five days, compared to just one day seven years ago. The collapse is such that the state oil company itself has gone so far as to dismantle oil pipelines to sell them for scrap, while key complexes such as Paraguaná are dying due to lack of maintenance.

The rescue recipe. Venezuela dreams of the 4 million barrels per day that marked its rise in the 70s, but the financial reality is a bucket of cold water. Francisco Monaldi, director of energy policy at Rice University, calculates that the energy rescue demands 10 billion dollars a year for an entire decade. A goal as ambitious as it is expensive.

However, money is not everything when human capital is lacking. CBCNews remember that In 2003, 23,000 skilled professionals were laid off, many of whom ended up in the Canadian tar sands. Without this talent, American cutting-edge technology has no hands to operate it. Furthermore, giants such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips will not move a single drill until legal certainty is guaranteed and settlements are made. billionaire debts of the expropriations of the Chávez era.

But why Venezuela if Canada already exists? If crude oil is so “bad” and expensive, why Trump’s interest? The key is a necessary technical symbiosis. Gulf Coast refineries (Texas and Louisiana) They are like “stomachs” Designed for heavy food. Ironically, the oil that the US extracts through fracking is “too good” (too light). To optimize your plants and produce diesel, they need to mix its light crude oil with Venezuela’s heavy crude oil.

Rory Johnston and Lino Carrillo they explain thatAlthough Canada’s crude oil is identical to Venezuelan crude, the latter has an unbeatable advantage: it is three days away by ship and has access to deep waters, while Canada suffers from “geographic confinement” due to saturated oil pipelines. Furthermore, by controlling this flow, the US cuts off the supply to “teapot” (independent refiners) of China, which until now bought Venezuelan crude at a discount, thus eliminating a competitive advantage for Beijing.

There was a small pulse. Behind Trump’s mobilization, as the New York Times emphasizesChevron has positioned itself as a key player in the entire equation. This desire to go after Venezuelais also explained because it had a single major oil company that has maintained its presence in the country since 1923, surviving nationalizations and crises while competitors such as ExxonMobil left the board.

There is a hidden treasure. Beyond oil, Venezuela is a “gas station” that wastes its own product. Luisa Palacios and The Kobeissi Letter The 200 billion cubic feet of natural gas stand out (the largest reserve in the region). Due to pure technical negligence, PDVSA today burns or vents an amount of gas equivalent to the consumption of all of Colombia, losing 1 billion dollars annually in smoke. Added to this is the potential of Mining Bow with critical minerals (nickel, coltan, bauxite) essential for the defense and technology industry.

The paradox of the “gas station without hoses.” Trump has taken control of the largest reserve on the planet, but he has found himself with a facility that has no hoses, whose electrical grid is collapsing and whose fuel requires intensive processing so as not to destroy the engines.

Although the flow of exports can be redirected quickly from China to the US in a matter of months—benefiting refineries in Texas and Louisiana—the actual reconstruction of the sector is a long-term project. The real battle has not been the capture of Maduro, but the management of an obsolete industry in a world that is beginning to prepare for the end of the fossil era. Venezuela is the jackpot, but it’s a prize that comes with a $100 billion repair bill.

Image | freepik

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