The Deuce: Controlling their oil as a rationale makes zero economic sense

As you note, it would take a huge capital investment to start production and given that, expanding production is only profitable if prices are a lot higher than they are now.

So, if the Trump administration was minimally competent, it would be obvious all the oil talk was a smokescreen to disguise their real reason for the attack. However, it’s very possible the top admin officials were too ignorant to know that, and just made a decision based on the claimed total oil reserves. (And presumably Trump wanted to extract a bunch of the profit from that oil to enrich himself.)

So now, they are pivoting to try and fleece the US taxpayer to get them to subsidize development costs, in order to enable the grift and corrupt profit skimming that was Trump’s primary motivation.

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ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips both lost billions in Venezuela when the country nationalized the oil industry. $10B and $12B, respectively.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/business/energy-environment/trump-venezuela-oil-exxon-mobil-conocophillips.html

Trump just signed an EO "to safeguard Venezuelan oil revenue", which prohibits these companies from making a claim against future oil profits to recoup what the Venezuelan government owes them.

Trump actually said, "We're not going to look at what people lost in the past because that was their fault," aka "eat a dick, Exxon and Conoco"

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-signs-order-protect-venezuelan-oil-revenue-held-us-accounts-2026-01-10/

Trump said he wants $100B in investment into Venezuelan oil infrastructure (I think the real figure is at least double that).

They floated the balloon of taxpayer dollars as a reimbursement to these oil companies for their investment, but that went over like a fart in church, especially in a midterm year.

The time and money needed to build up VZ, then drill new rigs and get them producing- it's probably 2028 before we see any significant uptick more than a couple hundred thousand barrels.

No wonder the CEOs are saying it's a stupid fucking idea, because it is a stupid fucking idea.

All so they can get some of the worst quality oil in the world.

Or, more accurately.............
So we can prevent China from getting it.

And now there's unrest in Iran, you say?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm