The beginning of 2026 is marked by the US intervention in Venezuela. The future of the Chavista regime or Donald Trump’s threats to other Western territories are issues that keep analysts awake, but economic experts focus above all on one thing: the future of the price of oil. And, as you may have already read or heard, Venezuela is the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, with more than 300,000 barrels concentrated in its lands, 17% of the world’s total reserves, even more than those of Saudi Arabia, the largest international crude oil producer. And the United States has already begun to move.
During the early hours of this Wednesday, Trump announced that the Venezuelan authorities They will deliver up to 50 million barrels of oil to Washington «high quality» to be sold at market prices. The president assured in a publication in Truth Social that the money will be controlled by him «to guarantee that it is used for the benefit of the people of Venezuela and the United States.» Likewise, a fleet of eleven oil tankers from Chevron, the only US oil company operating in Venezuela, is headed to the country and is positioned as the main exporter of this crude oil. Trump’s plan is simple and he has revealed it himself: American oil companies will be in charge of renew the country’s outdated infrastructurea process that is estimated to last about 18 months. This will require billion-dollar investments that the companies must carry out may be subsidized by the Government. «Having a Venezuela that is an oil producer is good for the United States because it keeps the price of oil low,» Trump said on ‘NBC’. But experts dispute these ideas.
DOUBTS AND UNCERTAINTY
This is the case, for example, of the analysts at BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world. In their weekly report, these strategists warn about the «a lot of uncertainty» that is coming due to the continuity of Chavismo at the head of Venezuela and the absence of a «clear political and military» plan.
However, these experts believe that this circumstance will have a «limited impact» in the short term, especially on the raw materials side. «On the macroeconomic front, we expect very limited short-term changes in Venezuelan oil, gas and mining production. That means that Commodity channel likely won’t drive immediate macroeconomic impacts«, they point out. For his part, Jack Janasiewicz, portfolio manager at Natixis IM Solutions, is also skeptical of Washington’s plan. Firstly, because it is not clear to him that American companies are interested in incurring the expenses that the renovation of the Venezuelan oil infrastructure will require. In this regard, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ reported on Tuesday that Trump plans to meet with representatives of the major American oil companies. Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobilalong with other national producers, at the White House on Friday «to discuss significant investments in Venezuela’s oil sector.» «While President Trump has hinted that U.S. oil companies could benefit from the rebuilding effort, we remain somewhat skeptical. U.S. oil companies are accountable to shareholders, and these shareholders require a return on investment. With oil prices hovering in the mid-$50s per barrel for spot WTI, the cost-benefit ratio of that capital expenditure remains questionable«, he points out. Likewise, he explains, greater oil production «would only push prices even further down,» making the profitability of these operations would become «even more precarious». «US oil companies have so far been reluctant to expand drilling in much more politically stable regions, such as the Permian or the Canadian tar sands. Why should we expect this to change when considering the spending necessary to tap Venezuela’s reserves?«adds Janasiewicz. The expert also focuses on the little trust that the Chavista regime generates in the sector, since the oil companies «have certainly not forgotten the seizures of assets» after the nationalization of the Venezuelan oil industry in 2007. And in the long term, the Natixis IM expert It is also not clear that they will have a «significant impact» in the long term in the markets «What do these recent actions have to do with the earnings of the S&P 500? Nothing really. It’s background noise. Which is what geopolitical headlines usually are. Just another in a long line of incidents that have trained investors to look beyond the geopolitical noise.«, sentence.
THE GEOPOLITICAL FACTOR
All in all, there does seem to be some optimism regarding the situation in the region after the overthrow of Maduro. Janasiewicz believes that a «docile» Chavismo, although undesirable, could be a «positive development» for Latin America, reducing the risk associated with doing business in the region. «With Colombia, Peru and Brazil going to the polls this year, it will be interesting to see how voters react to the US intervention in Venezuela. Will the recent string of right-wing victories in Chile and Argentina continue in the rest of the region or will we see an abrupt interruption of this political turn in the rest of South America?» he adds. But that’s where the good news seems to end. And both Janasiewicz and BlackRock believe that this event, added to the threats to several countries, what it really means is a change of world order. Specifically, BlackRock speaks of the «third» order different from World War II, which will be marked «by the readjustment of the United States in its economic and geopolitical relations with the world, reflected in its recently published National Security Strategy.» «We find that markets do not sustainably reposition themselves to binary geopolitical risks even when they increase. If risk assets are affected in the short term exclusively by geopolitical concerns, we could consider taking the opposite position,» they note. For this reason, BlackRock begins 2026 by recommending maintaining a «risk-taking» stanceoverweighting US equities based on the theme of artificial intelligence (AI). They are also overweight hard currency emerging market bonds and like certain «select» emerging market stocks.
