\n Surveyors from Venezuelan Oil Concessions (VOC), the local Royal Dutch Shell affiliate, spent much of the 1910s exploring the region with only moderate success. But on July 31, 1922, they made a decision of significant consequence: VOC decided to drill deeper into Los Barrosos-2, an oil well in the Maracaibo Basin they had drilled four years prior but had since abandoned, according to American Association of Petroleum Geologists\u2019 Orlando M\u00e9ndez<\/a>, a Venezuelan oil field historian.\n <\/p>\n \n VOC would continue to drill Los Barrosos-2 for months. By the second week of December, the driller reached a depth of 1,450 feet and struck oil sands. Oil and gas began to flow, and on December 14, the ground shook, the gusher came pouring out of the ground, and the geyser couldn\u2019t be stopped for more than a week.\n <\/p>\n \n It was a major ecological disaster. But it set Venezuela on a century-long course of stunning wealth, significant crashes, and political turmoil. That path ultimately led to the extraordinary capture of President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> by US forces on Saturday, a stunning operation that could ultimately restore America\u2019s oil dominance in the country.\n <\/p>\n \n President Donald Trump said a core objective of the recent military operation in Venezuela was to place the country\u2019s oil sector under US control, and give US oil companies the ability to rebuild there<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe oil companies are going to go in and rebuild their system,\u201d Trump said Sunday night. \u201cIt was the greatest theft in the history of America. Nobody has ever stolen our property like they have. They took our oil away from us. They took the infrastructure away and all that infrastructure is rotted and decayed, and the oil companies are going to go in and rebuild it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n If that happens, it will be expensive, complex and potentially dangerous.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt will be a long road back for the country, given its decades-long decline under the Ch\u00e1vez and Maduro regimes, as well as the fact that the US regime-change track record is not one of unambiguous success,\u201d said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.\n <\/p>\n \n Croft said accomplishing Trump\u2019s goal will effectively require US oil companies to play a \u201cquasi-governmental role\u201d to build out capacity and develop the infrastructure. That could cost $10 billion a year, oil executives contend, according to Croft.\n <\/p>\n \n That\u2019s consistent with estimates from Petr\u00f3leos de Venezuela, SA, better known as PDVSA, Venezuela\u2019s state-run oil company. PDVSA acknowledges its pipelines haven\u2019t been updated in 50 years, and the cost to update the infrastructure to return to peak production levels would cost $58 billion.\n <\/p>\n \n Another complication: PDVSA has been military-run for decades, and Venezuela\u2019s economy is solely dependent on its success. Trump acknowledged the US military may need to maintain a long-term presence on the ground to secure Venezuela\u2019s oil infrastructure.\n <\/p>\n \n In recent weeks, Trump administration officials engaged US oil companies to gauge interest in returning to Venezuela, but the energy companies were wary to commit, especially given the major questions about the country\u2019s future stability, according to two sources familiar with the engagement.\n <\/p>\n \n For now, the Trump administration says it is working with Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, who had served as Maduro\u2019s vice president and energy minister, to help the United States run the country \u2013 despite Venezuela\u2019s opposition movement briefing the Trump administration several times on its plans to privatize the oil industry if it were to take control of the government, sources said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt is impossible to just bring US companies into Venezuela without an agreement with the government,\u201d said Homayoun Falakshai, lead crude research analyst at Kpler. \u201cOnce this is done (and it may take months at the minimum), US companies will have a stronger footprint and will ship most of their equity production back into the US Gulf Coast, which craves sour crude.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n If everything goes right \u2014 and that\u2019s a big if \u2014 the US oil industry could restore its most important partner that it\u2019s been doing business with for over a century. But, to Trump\u2019s point, it hasn\u2019t always been an easy partnership.\n <\/p>\n \n By 1929, Venezuela had fully transformed from an agricultural exporter to an oil-based economy. More than 100 foreign oil companies were doing business in the country, which had become the world\u2019s No. 2 oil producer behind the United States, according to the Council on Foreign Relations<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Venezuela\u2019s dictator at the time, General Juan Vicente G\u00f3mez, welcomed the influx of business. But Venezuela\u2019s government and people weren\u2019t reaping the rewards of the largest corporations in the world \u2014 Standard Oil, Shell and Gulf \u2014 effectively taking over the country\u2019s economy.\n <\/p>\n \n G\u00f3mez died in 1935, and his successors sought reform. Venezuela passed the 1943 Hydrocarbons Law, which forced foreign oil companies to hand over half of their oil profits, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n It was a price oil companies were willing to pay. That\u2019s because Venezuela held the upper hand.\n <\/p>\n \n For one, Venezuela was oil rich, sitting on a massive 303 billion barrels worth of crude \u2014 about a fifth of the world\u2019s global reserves, according to the US Energy Information Administration<\/a> (EIA). But, more importantly, its heavy, sour crude is extraordinarily cheap, nearby to the United States and able to be refined into key derivatives for US industry, including asphalt, heating oil and diesel. The light, sweet crude from Texas is good for making gasoline \u2014 and that\u2019s about it.\n <\/p>\n Democracy and state control<\/p>\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ap20227000153222.jpg\")
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