Venezuela is unlikely to add more than 300,000 barrels per day of oil production by 2030, limiting the gains from Washington's plans to control about a fifth of the country's proven reserves and rebuild its degraded energy sector. The Trump administration has moved to take control of Venezuela's oil industry following the departure of former leader Nicolás Maduro in January, with plans to bring in US companies to revive an industry crippled by decades of underinvestment.
North American Blue Energy Partners, led by Venezuelan oil magnate Alejandro Betancourt, plans to invest up to $100 billion across 17 oil projects in Venezuela. Separately, Chevron has committed $7 billion to double its Venezuelan output to 600,000 barrels per day over seven years.
Much of Venezuela's 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves—nearly a fifth of the world's total—lies in the Orinoco Belt as extra-heavy crude and bitumen that require costly upgrading before shipment and processing. Only a limited pool of refineries, mainly in the US Gulf Coast, have the equipment to refine such heavy grades, according to analysts at Kpler and Rystad Energy.
Homayoun Falakshahi, head of crude oil analysis at Kpler, said the crude has "very low API gravity, sometimes under 10 degrees," making it "extremely heavy, very viscous." Producing those barrels requires large upgraders and surface facilities that "you just cannot build in a couple of years," he added.
Rystad Energy forecasts Venezuela's output at about 1.4 million barrels per day by 2028, with three million barrels per day not reached until around 2040. Most of the Nabep projects are new developments requiring six to ten years to come online, according to Falakshahi, who estimates they typically underdeliver and arrive around 2033 or 2034.
Venezuela's oil exports to the US surged 238 percent to average 515,000 barrels per day in the first eight months of 2026, following the political shift, according to Kpler data. Total Venezuelan exports averaged 1.11 million barrels per day, up from 944,000 the previous year, though US-bound volumes have already eased from a July peak of 834,000 barrels per day to 437,000 in August.
