In 3 January 2026, the US military swooped into Caracas, Venezuela, and arrested the country’s president, spiriting him back to prison in the US. Nicolás Maduro had been president of Venezuela since 2013 and succeeded Hugo Chávez in the role.
The upending of Venezuela’s leadership has led to a renewed interest in the country’s premier resource, oil. The country has the largest amount of proven reserves of any country at approximately 303 billion bbl, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) (Fig. 1).
These reserves have been languishing lately, with the country’s output plummeting 82% since 1999 (Fig. 2), according to the Italian Institute of International Affairs.
“Venezuela is a huge brownfield,” said Luis Pacheco, a nonresident fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, “because it was developed, abandoned, and now, actually, is in the process of being redeveloped.”
Pacheco spoke at the 2026 Offshore Technology Conference in Houston about the damage caused by the country’s shriveling oil industry and the opportunities and potential that now exist there.
