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January 7, 2026<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Why Does Venezuela Have So Much Oil? Geology<\/p>\n Trump has cited Venezuela\u2019s oil resources as motivation for capturing the nation\u2019s leader\u2014here\u2019s the geology behind the news<\/p>\n By Meghan Bartels edited by Andrea Thompson<\/span><\/p>\n President Donald Trump\u2019s push to take control of Venezuela\u2019s oil has focused global attention on the South American nation\u2019s vast reserves.<\/p>\n Trump has repeatedly touted Venezuela\u2019s rich oil supply as among the motivations for the January 2 military assault on the country and the capture of its leader, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, who has since been charged with drug trafficking and weapons possession.<\/p>\n But just how much oil does Venezuela have, and why?<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n In 2024 the country claimed more than 300 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves, the highest of any nation. The runners up were Saudi Arabia, with more than 260 billion barrels, and Iran, with more than 200 billion barrels. The global total was 1,566 billion barrels.<\/p>\n And the vast reserves are not a coincidence. Geology is very much in Venezuela\u2019s favor, says Luis Zerpa, a petroleum engineer at the Colorado School of Mines. \u201cFrom the geology side, it just has the perfect location,\u201d he says. And like all fossil fuels, the country\u2019s oil owes its existence to deep time\u2014and the planet\u2019s dynamic surface.<\/p>\n The story of oil begins when land is pushed up in one region, creating a low-lying basin nearby, Zerpa says. Rock is eroded from the higher-elevation land into the basin, which also fills with the organic remains of plants and animals. Over millions of years, enough material piles up above to raise the temperature and pressure to the point that sediments turn into rock and organic material becomes oil and gas.<\/p>\n The balance of oil and gas depends on two factors. The first is how much rock builds up above the material. The so-called oil window occurs at a depth of anywhere between 4,000 and 12,000 feet; below it, organic matter is more likely to turn into gas. The other factor is the origin of the organic material itself\u2014marine plants are more likely to become oil, whereas terrestrial plants are more likely to become gas.<\/p>\n As oil and gas form\u2014and as tectonic plates move\u2014the rock surrounding these deposits begins to fracture. This sets the hydrocarbons free from the source rock in which they formed and enables them to migrate up into more porous rock that then traps them in place.<\/p>\n Venezuela is nestled between the Caribbean and South American plates. And the Nazca plate, which underlies the eastern Pacific Ocean, also shapes the area\u2019s tectonic scene. The jostling of all those plates lifted up the northern Andes and other highlands in the region\u2014while it simultaneously created three sedimentary basins that have produced oil and gas: the Eastern Venezuela Basin in the north, the Maracaibo basin in the northwest and the Barinas-Apure basin in the west.<\/p>\n Hence, Venezuela\u2019s more than 300 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves were formed. Here, \u201cproven\u201d means that engineers have drilled enough wells to accurately estimate the extent of oil and gas deposits in the country\u2019s territory.<\/p>\n Getting that oil is a different matter. Venezuela\u2019s production of the fossil fuel peaked around 1970 at around 3.7 million barrels per day, before it fell steeply starting in the late 1970s and continued to drop during the 1980s. It recovered here and there in the mid-1990s and early 2010s. But in 2025 the nation produced only around 1.1 million barrels per day. Analysts expect that any political transition in the wake of Maduro\u2019s capture and arrest will barely raise that output for at least the next two years: aging infrastructure has severely constrained production, and fixing that will take billions of dollars in investment and several years, Reuters has reported.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. 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I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 7, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Why Does Venezuela Have So Much Oil? Geology Trump has cited Venezuela\u2019s oil resources as motivation for capturing the nation\u2019s leader\u2014here\u2019s the geology behind the news By Meghan Bartels edited by Andrea Thompson President Donald Trump\u2019s push to take control of Venezuela\u2019s oil has<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[268,81,9956],"class_list":{"0":"post-40671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-oil","9":"tag-trump","10":"tag-venezuelas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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