It's Not About the Oil (But You Already Knew That)

The news keep rolling in and everyone seems to think that America invaded Venezuela for oil.

Oil. Always oil. Nothing but oil.

Sure. And Putin annexed Crimea for the beaches.

Venezuela sits on the largest proven oil reserves on Earth, 13% more than Saudi Arabia. But Venezuelan crude emerges thick as tar, heavy with sulfur, demanding specialized infrastructure that barely exists outside U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. Saudi petroleum flows light and sweet. The difference matters because not all oil is worth the same geopolitical headache.

American companies discovered Venezuelan oil in the 1920s and built the entire industry from scratch. Venezuela operated as an agrarian economy before that moment. Coffee plantations. Cacao farms. Zero petroleum engineers. By 1928, U.S. corporations had transformed Venezuela into one of the world's top exporters.

The 1970s Arab oil embargo sent prices from $1.80 per barrel to $11. A 500% surge. Venezuela experienced the opposite of crisis. Billions in petrodollars flooded state coffers.

Venezuela nationalized its oil sector in 1976, creating PDVSA. But nationalization didn't eliminate dependence on American refineries engineered specifically for heavy crude processing. The arrangement worked. Venezuela earned billions. American companies profited from refining operations.

Hugo Chavez didn't seize the industry from American control despite popular belief. That seizure had already occurred in 1976, two decades before Chavez took power. Chavez adopted anti-American rhetoric while maintaining oil exports to the United States throughout his presidency. He benefited from the largest oil boom in modern history.

His real damage came internally. Chavez purged PDVSA of experienced workers and replaced them with political loyalists. Corruption metastasized. Production collapsed. By the time Nicolas Maduro inherited this wreckage in 2013, Venezuela's oil production had dropped to a fraction of capacity.

He accelerated the destruction. The sanctions argument emerges predictably, but the timeline contradicts it. Before 2019, U.S. sanctions targeted individual Venezuelan officials involved in human rights violations and narcotics trafficking. Venezuela continued selling oil freely to the United States.

The first oil sanctions arrived in 2019 when Trump imposed an embargo on PDVSA. American companies hated this policy because they lost access to the heavy crude their refineries needed. Maduro suspended elections and consolidated authoritarian control. Politics drove the decision.

In recent months, Venezuelan officials close to Maduro's inner circle floated proposals through back channels. They offered to welcome American investors and reduce ties with China, Russia, and Iran in exchange for the regime's survival.

Trump rejected the overtures.

If this were actually about oil, that rejection makes zero sense. Venezuelan officials were offering exactly what the conspiracy claims America wanted all along.

The United States invaded Venezuela because it could. Because projecting power in the Western Hemisphere remains a core strategic interest that predates the Monroe Doctrine's formal articulation. Because a failed state trafficking narcotics and hosting hostile foreign military installations ninety miles from U.S. maritime trade routes represents an intolerable security threat.

And because nobody with the capacity to stop it has the political will to try. Russia's military is shredded in Ukraine. China won't risk its economic relationship with the United States over Caracas. The international community will condemn, protest, and sanction, then move on.

Venezuela collapsed under its own corruption long before American troops arrived. The oil sitting beneath Venezuelan soil can't save a regime that systematically dismantled its own capacity to extract value from that resource.

The oil isn't worthless, but it's not the endgame. America doesn't need Venezuelan oil. American refineries want it, but need and want occupy different categories of strategic calculus.

The invasion happened because power seeks power.

Regional instability doesn't resolve itself. Venezuela's collapse created conditions that demanded response. The United States provided it.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos

Copyright © 2026 Maria Santos Salinas for FRONTeras.