\n<\/p>\n
Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American\u2019s Science Quickly, I\u2019m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman.<\/p>\n
Over the past couple of weeks oil\u2014specifically, Venezuelan oil\u2014has been all over the headlines.<\/p>\n
It started late on January 2, when President Donald Trump ordered U.S. military forces to enter Venezuela and capture the country\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, which they did early the next morning. Last week the country\u2019s interior minister said the action killed 100 people.<\/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 the intervening weeks President Trump has made clear that at least part of his motivation for the operation was the nation\u2019s oil fields, which are home to an estimated 303 billion barrels of oil reserves, more oil than Saudi Arabia or any other country in the world.<\/p>\n
To dig into the situation we spoke with Amy Westervelt, a climate reporter and executive editor of the multimedia climate reporting project Drilled. We talked to Amy about why Venezuela has so much oil, the history of the country\u2019s oil industry and how this obsession with oil is impacting climate change.<\/p>\n
Thank you for joining us.<\/p>\n
Amy Westervelt: Thanks for having me.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: You perhaps know more about oil in South America than any other climate reporter I\u2019ve met. What got you interested in it?<\/p>\n
Westervelt: Actually, Guyana is what got me [Laughs] interested in it. So I got this press release from Exxon[Mobil] in, I wanna say, 2020 that said that Guyana was going to be their most productive basin within the next five to 10 years, that it would outpace even the Permian Basin in Texas. And I thought, \u201cHow did they go that big that fast?\u201d<\/p>\n
And then shortly after that I got some press releases from an attorney that had filed various cases in Guyana trying to stop the offshore project and arguing that part of the reason that they had moved so fast was that they had ignored various environmental regulations.<\/p>\n
So those two things kind of came in the same week, and I thought, \u201cOh, this is really interesting, and I haven\u2019t really seen much about it.\u201d So I started working with a reporter in Guyana and then going back and forth myself to report on this, like, new oil industry that was being created in, you know, 2020.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Okay, we will get back to Guyana, I promise.<\/p>\n
Westervelt: [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: But before we get there …<\/p>\n
Westervelt: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: As you know the Trump administration recently invaded Venezuela and captured its president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, under allegations of drug trafficking. Your recent article in Drilled mentions access to the region\u2019s oil is a big motivator of what\u2019s happening there. And kind of focusing primarily just on Venezuela for right now, Venezuela has a lot of oil, like, an estimated 303 billion barrels of oil, compared to the United States, which has roughly 46 billion barrels. A very basic question: Like, why does Venezuela and that area just have so much oil?<\/p>\n
Westervelt: Well, they have the Orinoco Basin, which is the world\u2019s largest oil reserve, basically [Laughs], so Venezuela has the most oil of anyone in the world. But it\u2019s not great oil; it\u2019s heavy crude. And so it\u2019s kind of on par with, like, tar sands oil in Canada.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: So what does that mean? Because I think for most people …<\/p>\n
Westervelt: Right.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: We don\u2019t really think about, like, grade of oil. We don\u2019t often see oil. If we have a vision of what oil is, it\u2019s like The Beverly Hillbillies …<\/p>\n
Westervelt: [Laughs.] Yes.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: And, like, it, like, trickling out of the ground. [Laughs.] So, so what do, like, grades of oil actually mean?<\/p>\n
Westervelt: So the Venezuelan oil is heavy crude, which means it\u2019s got a lot of stuff in it, which means that it is more expensive to refine, which cuts into oil companies\u2019 margins. And it also is less favorable for a lot of different, like, types of engines, types of uses, which means that it gets a lower price on the market.<\/p>\n
So as the price of oil has come down the price of heavy crude comes down even more because what we generally think of as, like, the price per barrel is sweet crude, you know? [Laughs.] It\u2019s, like, it\u2019s the good stuff. So whatever that\u2019s at, which is lower, heavy crude is gonna be even lower than that. And then on top of that Venezuelan oil has had all these sanctions against it. Trump has been part of that, both in his first term and more recently.<\/p>\n
So, you know\u2014\u2019cause I feel like the question is always like, \u201cWhy isn\u2019t Venezuela Saudi Arabia, right [Laughs], like, if it has this much oil?\u201d And there are a few reasons, one of which is, yeah, the quality of oil, the distance to markets for it and then the fact that it has sanctions on these markets.<\/p>\n
More people are more interested in the stuff that doesn\u2019t burn quite so heavy. Partly, that\u2019s driven by environmental regulations as well.<\/p>\n
But then on top of that they\u2019ve known they had this oil for a long time. I mean, some people will say, like, the Spaniards knew it when they were colonizing Venezuela and all of that, but for sure they\u2019ve been developing it since around World War I, when everyone was looking for more oil because that was the first kind of big fossil fueled war.<\/p>\n
And American companies have been in there, like, pretty much since jump. So you have this weird thing that happens in a lot of situations where U.S. oil companies feel, like, this attachment to the oil industry there [Laughs] and this, like, entitlement to the oil that\u2019s there as well.<\/p>\n
But, like, Venezuela started trying to nationalize its oil industry in, like, the \u201930s and \u201940s. We found some documents from this old PR guy who got sent by Standard Oil to go try to, like, stop this from happening in the \u201940s and was successful. And a big part of that was labor and, you know, the fact that workers were annoyed that, you know, they were being badly paid and badly treated by these foreign companies that were making so much money off of Venezuelan oil. So, you know, at that time, in the \u201940s, it was all about kind of, like, dealing with the labor unions, getting rid of the labor unions, getting contracts in place that, you know, would prevent that from happening.<\/p>\n
But they could only kind of stave it off for so long, and in 1976 Venezuela did nationalize oil, but they allowed a lot of joint partnerships, so it didn\u2019t really overly affect U.S. oil companies [Laughs]\u2014until [then-Venezuelan President Hugo] Ch\u00e1vez in 2007 said, \u201cOkay, enough of this. Like, you can be here, but the majority shareholder in any oil project in Venezuela has to be the state oil company. And if you don\u2019t like it, like, you can get out.\u201d And both Exxon and ConocoPhillips refused.<\/p>\n
And so they left, and he seized their assets. Chevron stayed as, like, a minority shareholder in some of the projects there, but that has been, you know, kind of up and down in recent years because of U.S. sanctions as well, so Chevron\u2019s kind of been teetering. But when Exxon got kicked out they had this backup plan already in mind \u2019cause they had been camping out on an exploratory license in Guyana since the late \u201990s.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah, and so my understanding is much of that infrastructure that Venezuela had is now quite old. And so just to summarize kind of the lay of the land: Venezuela has oil, but much of it is not that great, and it would need significant infrastructure investment to really get it pumping again to the degree that we seem to be talking about, and it wouldn\u2019t necessarily command a great price.<\/p>\n
Westervelt: To the tune of, like, tens of billions of dollars. Like, it\u2019s not a small amount of money that we\u2019re talking about here.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: And yet right across the border is Guyana, which has a ton of sweet, light crude. Can you talk about the conflict that has been playing out over the past few years between Venezuela and Guyana?<\/p>\n
Westervelt: Yes, so that conflict actually goes back all the way to, like, the late 1800s. So Venezuela and Guyana have argued over this one area that\u2019s called Essequibo. Venezuela has claimed that it\u2019s a Venezuelan state for a long time. In the late 1890s\u2014I think it\u2019s 1899\u2014there was an international arbitration ruling over this dispute that said, \u201cNo, this is where the border is. Essequibo is in Guyana.\u201d And that, you know, was kind of fine for some period of time.<\/p>\n
In the early \u201960s this dispute kind of, like, came up again. Some people think, actually, it was around oil then as well \u2019cause there was some early exploration happening and some thinking that possibly there was oil off the coast there. And at that time there was another treaty that was signed that\u2019s called the Geneva [Agreement], and it was signed by the U.K., Venezuela and British Guiana, which is what Guyana was at the time because it had not been given …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Independence.<\/p>\n
Westervelt: Independence yet, exactly. So it was signed, made official in 1966, and then just, actually, like, a few months later Guyana was just kind of added to it. Like, they were, like, made independent, so it\u2019s like, \u201cOh, now it\u2019s you guys,\u201d but they never really, like, agreed to any of this stuff.<\/p>\n
So in 2015 Exxon announced that they had found this enormous reserve of oil offshore Guyana. And immediately, Maduro started saying, \u201cYou know, actually, that\u2019s Venezuela.\u201d I talked to some petroleum engineers in Guyana, and some of them actually think that part of the reason Venezuela was concerned about the oil in Guyana was also that they think the reservoirs are connected, and so they were concerned that if the oil\u2019s getting taken out, like, over here, it would reduce production in Venezuela as well.<\/p>\n
But regardless, this whole dispute has flared up again since 2015. And in the last two years in particular Maduro started to get really aggressive about it. And this is the piece that I feel like has been missed by a lot of the coverage around Venezuela, is that, you know, he started sending, like, navy ships to, like, patrol around this area.<\/p>\n
[Laughs.] In December of 2023 Maduro just, like, once again declared that Essequibo is a Venezuelan state. He had a referendum where the people of Venezuela voted, and, you know, the voting system in Venezuela has been under a lot of scrutiny for various reasons [Laughs] for a long time, but he claims that Venezuelan voters overwhelmingly agreed that this is part of Venezuela. And then in January 2025 he announced that they would be holding elections for the governor of this Venezuelan state.<\/p>\n
As this is going on Guyana has now taken a claim to the International Court of Justice to ask them to rule on it. They\u2019ve filed that claim in 2018. It\u2019s been very slow-moving. But, like, the ruling has so far said, \u201cHey, you guys have to, like, keep the status quo until we make a final decision,\u201d which hasn\u2019t happened yet.<\/p>\n
But then in March of 2025 Venezuela sent [naval ship] to Exxon\u2019s floating offshore production vessel [Laughs] and told staff of that boat that they were in Venezuelan waters, you know, were, like, aggressively asking a bunch of questions. It was a very aggressive act, and it was directly at Exxon\u2019s vessel, and that really got the U.S. involved. So all of a sudden both the U.S. State Department kind of issued a statement about it\u2014there were, like, various entities that were saying, like, \u201cHey, you guys can\u2019t do this. You need to calm it down.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then Marco Rubio actually went to Venezuela in late March of 2025 and gave this press conference with Guyanese officials, where he said, like, \u201cVenezuela\u2019s gonna have the U.S. military to deal with if it doesn\u2019t calm it down with this stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: So undergirding all of this jockeying for oil is the fact that the planet is getting warmer …<\/p>\n
Westervelt: [Laughs.] Right.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Climate change is real …<\/p>\n
Westervelt: Right, yeah, uh-huh.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: And the reality is that if we wanna maintain conditions that are suitable for human life, we need to stop using oil and fossil fuels altogether. It very much feels like we\u2019re in [an] early 2000s redux, but the climate is much warmer. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Westervelt: Yeah, it\u2019s so much worse. I mean, this, actually, to me, was also what drew me to the Guyana story in the first place, is that [roughly] 90 percent of the population of Guyana is on this tiny sliver of coast right next to Georgetown that will be underwater in about 10 years.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: That\u2019s shocking.<\/p>\n
Westervelt: [Roughly] 90 percent of the population needs to move and yet they were going all in on this new oil industry. I was like, \u201cWhat? What? Make it make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the sad\u2014to me, it\u2019s, like, such an illustration of the total failure of the international community to do anything about this problem, to figure out, you know, any kind of climate damages or reparations policy. Because Guyana, which was also, like, the early poster child for paying developing countries for carbon sinks and working with the Global South on carbon credits and all of that stuff: like, they were\u2014you know, Norway put a bunch of money into preserving forests in Guyana for the purpose of maintaining a carbon sink there. They\u2019re one of the world\u2019s largest carbon sinks still. They were like, \u201cWe can\u2019t pay to move our entire country away [Laughs] from sea-level rise without this oil money.\u201d So it is, like, the biggest \u201crobbing Peter to pay Paul\u201d story I have ever heard of, and it\u2019s just\u2014it\u2019s mind-blowing that, like, they are now at the mercy of oil companies to pay for climate adaptation.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: That\u2019s really tragic, if you think about it.<\/p>\n
Westervelt: It\u2019s totally tragic, yeah.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: From a climate perspective, what do you think is missing from the conversation around Venezuela and Guyana?<\/p>\n
Westervelt: Well, I mean, I think the climate in its entirety is missing from that conversation. I feel like the fact that both of these countries are going to be massively hit by climate impacts is, like\u2014it\u2019s almost entirely missing. Even, you know, Guyana\u2019s kind of saying, like, \u201cOh, well, you know, if we have all this oil money, then we can pay to, like, move everyone out of harm\u2019s way.\u201d Well, where is out of harm\u2019s way?<\/p>\n
What happens if there\u2019s a blowout? Well, all of the Caribbean gets impacted by that. You have an oil spill that hits\u2014I mean, Exxon\u2019s own environmental impact report on this shows that if such a thing were to happen, it would impact 14 different Caribbean countries, 14, and all of which are at least somewhat dependent on tourism …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n
Westervelt: For their economy, so once those beaches are destroyed by an oil spill, how\u2019s that gonna go? Not to mention, like, food source …<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Yeah, fishing …<\/p>\n
Westervelt: [Laughs.] Fishing.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Is big in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n
Westervelt: Exactly. So there\u2019s so many layers of problems here.<\/p>\n
And again, I just feel like\u2014when I talked to people in Guyana, too, about, \u201cWhat\u2019s going on here? Aren\u2019t you guys\u2014I thought you guys were so concerned about the environment [Laughs] and climate and whatever,\u201d they\u2019re like, \u201cYeah, we are, but, like, how are we gonna pay for all of this stuff?\u201d And they were, like, a little bit\u2014and I don\u2019t think they\u2019re wrong in this\u2014\u201cWell, what\u2019s the difference between taking money from the Norwegian government to keep our trees [and] taking money from Exxon to drill our oil?\u201d<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Right, well, this has been\u2014I won\u2019t say a lovely conversation, but it has been …<\/p>\n
Westervelt: [Laughs.]<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: [Laughs.] An illuminating conversation …<\/p>\n
Westervelt: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: Thank you so much for your time today.<\/p>\n
Westervelt: Thank you. Thanks for having me.<\/p>\n
Pierre-Louis: That\u2019s all for today. Tune in on Monday for our weekly science news roundup.<\/p>\n
But I have a favor to ask before you go. I need your help for a future episode\u2014it\u2019s about kissing. Tell us about your most memorable kiss. What made it special? How did it feel? Record a voice memo on your phone or computer and send it over to ScienceQuickly@sciam.com. Be sure to include your name and where you\u2019re from.<\/p>\n
Science Quickly is produced by me, Kendra Pierre-Louis, along with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.<\/p>\n
For Scientific American, this is Kendra Pierre-Louis. Have a great weekend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American\u2019s Science Quickly, I\u2019m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. Over the past couple of weeks oil\u2014specifically, Venezuelan oil\u2014has been all over the headlines. It started late on January 2, when President Donald Trump ordered U.S. military forces to enter Venezuela and capture the country\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, which they did<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[1285,22214,2105,268,1614,4723],"class_list":{"0":"post-41881","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-big","9":"tag-collides","10":"tag-hotter","11":"tag-oil","12":"tag-planet","13":"tag-venezuela"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41881","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=41881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}