The arrest of Nicolás Maduro has pushed Venezuela back onto oil screens — but not as a straightforward oil headline. Beneath the surface, it is a moment that forces the market to reorder its priorities: who owns the oil, who holds the signature, and who controls the address where the money is sent.
The oil is there. The political condition is what decides whether it stays underground or crosses the sea.

Oil remains in the state’s hands — until further notice
The control map, as it reads today, says Petróleos de Venezuela, the state company known as PDVSA, still sits on most of the country’s production and reserves. Foreign companies operate through joint ventures and operating partnerships — including Chevron via production and in-country projects — alongside Russian and Chinese linkages. The practical meaning is blunt: operational influence exists, but the master keys to decision-making are still held by the state.
This is not a legal footnote. It sets the ceiling on any potential expansion, and it decides whether “investment” is a real pathway or merely a political slogan.

Nicolas Maduro. (AP)

The numbers don’t flatter anyone
Venezuela is not a story of a temporary dip. It is a story of an industrial capacity collapse that unfolded over decades. Nationalisation in the 1970s produced PDVSA, but today the verdict is measured in output, not rhetoric:
• Production peaked around 3.5 million barrels a day in 1997
• Then fell to roughly 950,000 barrels a day
• Exports hover near 550,000 barrels a day
Any talk of a rapid comeback runs into this gap immediately. The geology hasn’t changed — what sits above ground has.

Money before tankers
The immediate risk is not wells shutting in. It is the trade chain losing its footing. When it becomes unclear who is running the country, buyers stop asking “when does the cargo arrive?” and start asking “who do we pay?” In a market that hates ambiguity more than it hates risk, that alone can freeze flows — temporarily at first, and longer if the fog doesn’t lift.
That sensitivity rises further with US sanctions pressure on what is often described as the shadow fleet: tankers operating outside conventional shipping, insurance and compliance systems to move sanctioned crude. Targeting that channel doesn’t just hit politics — it hits logistics. It pressures exports, and it can make production hostage to the route, not the reservoir.

A risk premium — in a market leaning toward surplus
In the short term, the market does not look positioned for a major supply shock, especially with part of Venezuelan exports still moving through Chevron at roughly 150,000 barrels a day. But political fog typically charges a fee to price — not always as a clean “premium”, but as volatility. Delays, reroutings, payment friction: they don’t need to be dramatic to turn price action jumpy.

Heavy crude: difficult oil, but wanted
Venezuela’s longer-term importance isn’t only about volume — it’s about crude quality. The country produces heavy, high-sulphur crude: harder technically, costlier to handle, but valuable for complex refineries — especially in the United States — built to process heavy grades and turn them into higher-value products. A path that restores stable flows of this crude can reshape supply patterns for certain refineries even if it doesn’t quickly move the global balance.

Political change doesn’t build pipelines
Even under a fast political transition and some easing of sanctions, there could be an initial lift in exports through the release of stored crude to generate urgent cash. But that is a temporary pulse, not a recovery plan. The hard ceiling here is physical before it is political: infrastructure is degraded, fields need rehabilitation, and the sector needs years — and investment, not statements.
Some industry discussions put the bill at at least $10 billion a year to reverse the trend, with an obvious but decisive condition: a stable security environment. Without that, the more likely scenario is oscillation and disorder — the kind seen in other oil-state transitions, where contracts break before pumps do.

*Head of Market Research at Equiti Group