brilliant and thank you! Makes me feel better that the future could be more difficult for the american regime than they imagine right now, caught up in their euphoria of violence. Reality may hit hard!
Trump might like to pretend the Russia is due a sphere of influence, but in actual reality Russia is fast becoming a vassal state of China. Russian influence in the Middle East and in Latin America has already gone kaboom, and any remaining European influence is hacked to bits in the killing fields of Pokrovsk and Kupyansk.
True. Trump’s spheres of influence mindset is no more rational than his tariffs. Neither is Putin rational in his war to reconstitute the USSR empire. Russian loss of influence in the Middle East and Latin America proves trump’s point to his buddy in the kremlin. Stick to your playpen and I’ll stick to mine.
Maga has deluded themselves to believe that they can unmoor Russia from China by selling out Ukraine. Since they are deluded, incompetent and also in disarray (the Vance-Rubio chasm) they have so far only managed to push Russia further into the arms of China, while pissing away all their soft power and unsettling relationships with Europe (which, unlike the nuclear armed fossil fuelled carcass of Russia, is the real third superpower).
If imperialism were really beneficial then the imperialists would have made enough money to pay the armies to hold the imperial territories. This is not to say that there is no economic benefit derived from imperialism, just that it proved not to be large enough to be self sustaining.
I submit that you have to parse economically beneficial for whom — not so much the imperial state itself but the oligarchs who manipulate its foreign policy for their own enrichment.
Many of Europe’s African colonies come to mind. Some individuals could make a lot of money from stuff like rubber or cocoa, but conquering and administering far away places is expensive and for the state it was mostly a net drain. What did France get out of Chad for example? A bit of cotton.
Thank you very much for this very informative essay. I think (but lack the expertise to really KNOW) that oil produced from the Canadian Oil Sands is of a similar API gravity to that produced by Venezuela. Assuming this is the case, logistics and refining challenges are similarly complicated and finding new customers, new refining resources, and new logistics mechanisms seems a very large task. Those who think that Canada can simply build a new pipeline next week and ship product to Asia (which as I understand it currently receives less challenging product from the Saudis, Russians and others) might be naively optimistic. And none of this addresses the Pacific Rim countries migration towards electrification, which over the next fifteen years will greatly reduce demand their demand for refinanced product. It’s kind of cool that Trump would blithely commit his acts for war without any clear plan for what will be done in the immediate aftermath. I’ve no doubt that Rubio’s target is Cuba.
Regarding your Canadian pipeline comment we refine a great deal of the oil sands product on site. And there is a great amount of various petroleum products located in other parts of Ab as well a a huge amount of nat gas . Will the pipelines (plural theres a lng line planned as well) go in tomorrow? Of course not, but the products that are produced in Canada wont be the issue
Before Trump closed the doors regarding Cuba, that country was slowly but clearly sliding toward a more moderate relationship with the US. Cuba has been developing tourism properties on its north shore. The whole of the Caribbean basin has probably worried what would happen were Cuba to be fully open to American tourism. The message from this Maduro episode to the Cuban leadership is clear: Move to the right, be less socialist, and cut deals to open the flow of money.
There was an excellent account of the destruction of Venezuela's oil industry under Chavez on FP from 2018: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/16/how-venezuela-struck-it-poor-oil-energy-chavez/ Chavez's understanding of the country's greatest economic asset was described by one observer: “His was a completely encyclopedic ignorance.” Probably only matched by Trump's who has no clue what he's getting into and shares Chavez's contempt for legality and the value of human capital.
I agree, just more performative lurching about by trump regime In furtherance of his fantasy of 19th century “spheres of influence.” he gets the western hemisphere, Putin gets as much of Europe as he can conquer, Xi gets most of Asia. All imperial powers get their own sandboxes and peace will reign, just like it did just before two world wars. Fiona Hill said that Putin offered to swap Venezuela for Ukraine back in 2019. Other factors to consider: Venezuela has at least $100 billion in debts, it will cost at least that much to repair extraction infrastructure, its heavy crude is uneconomical to produce, the population will naturally be hostile to colonialism, there are at least 30k Cubans in country (Cuba is dependent on VZ oil), there seems to be no governance plan other than leaving the old regime in power minus Maduro. IOW, typical trump clusterfuck.
Where's the incentive for US oil majors to take a punt on a perennial basketcase like Venezuela given the instability and uncertainty and the previous pain they've suffered there?
This was really interesting and informative. Thank you! I trust your scholarship on this issue, but I kind of wonder if a little bit of “both” is what’s going on? Trump loves violence and acting like a mafia boss, but he also doesn’t seem like much of a details guy; maybe he doesn’t realize/understand the complexities around oil manufacturing and etc. and believes there’s loads of “black gold” there? I believe Venezuela also has large supplies of rare earth minerals, too? Also, this is just a curiosity of mine but my understanding is that oil from the U.S. tends to be heavy crude also, but our energy infrastructure isn’t really set up to use it in our country so we export it. Is this true? This has always struck me as kind of odd?
US oil production has been of the lighter, more valuable grade (~40 deg API, https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_api_adc_mbblpd_m.htm), particularly oil from the Permian. US refineries, by contrast, are generally set up to process heavy crude oil from places like Venezuela and Mexico, built around the time when the US was a net crude importer. So, your assumption is the correct one, that US exports oil that doesn't line up with its refining capacity, but it is so because the domestic crude is light, not heavy. Having said that, lighter crude can be more easily processed, across refinery types.
Adam, you’ve analyzed the geology (the mud) and the finance (the bond), but you missed the decisive variable: The Metallurgy (the machine).
The "Industrial Stomach" for Venezuelan bitumen isn't just "generic refineries." It is specifically the massive Delayed Cokers concentrated on the US Gulf Coast (PADD 3). These complex assets were engineered over 30 years with billions in CapEx specifically to crack Venezuelan Merey (16° API).
Here is the Arbitrage Reality: For the past 7 years, sanctions created a massive Thermodynamic Inefficiency:
System A (USGC): The world's most efficient heavy-oil processors were starved, forced to buy expensive Canadian WCS or ill-fitting light sweet crude, destroying diesel margins.
System B (China): They (specifically Shandong Teapots) became the "buyer of last resort," shipping this heavy asphalt across the Pacific—a logistical absurdity that only worked because of the extreme discount.
The "Monroe Doctrine" revival is not about politics; it is about Industrial Re-coupling. The US is not just reclaiming "sovereignty"; it is reclaiming Feedstock Fit. The goal is to stop the thermodynamic waste of shipping Venezuelan oil to China and restore the natural industrial marriage between the Orinoco Belt and the Texas Coast.
See discussions from Energi Media on what it would take to rebuild oil industry and why it makes little sense for an oil producing company like US to bother. Reality is simple: Trump et al are grasping for new territory, like a dog chasing a car.
You didn’t mention Trump's donor buddy Paul Singer vulture fund's 2025 purchase of CITGO, which owns those gulf coast refineries setup to process Venezuelan crude.
brilliant and thank you! Makes me feel better that the future could be more difficult for the american regime than they imagine right now, caught up in their euphoria of violence. Reality may hit hard!
No. All failure is Biden's fault. Reality can ALWAYS be denied.
Who’d thought that
Trump might like to pretend the Russia is due a sphere of influence, but in actual reality Russia is fast becoming a vassal state of China. Russian influence in the Middle East and in Latin America has already gone kaboom, and any remaining European influence is hacked to bits in the killing fields of Pokrovsk and Kupyansk.
True. Trump’s spheres of influence mindset is no more rational than his tariffs. Neither is Putin rational in his war to reconstitute the USSR empire. Russian loss of influence in the Middle East and Latin America proves trump’s point to his buddy in the kremlin. Stick to your playpen and I’ll stick to mine.
Maga has deluded themselves to believe that they can unmoor Russia from China by selling out Ukraine. Since they are deluded, incompetent and also in disarray (the Vance-Rubio chasm) they have so far only managed to push Russia further into the arms of China, while pissing away all their soft power and unsettling relationships with Europe (which, unlike the nuclear armed fossil fuelled carcass of Russia, is the real third superpower).
Russia can be used by china as a proxy to take over europe or at least european influence . The same way the US uses the Saudis and Isreal
Is invading countries for perceived, but not actual, material benefit unusual in the history of imperialism?
If imperialism were really beneficial then the imperialists would have made enough money to pay the armies to hold the imperial territories. This is not to say that there is no economic benefit derived from imperialism, just that it proved not to be large enough to be self sustaining.
I submit that you have to parse economically beneficial for whom — not so much the imperial state itself but the oligarchs who manipulate its foreign policy for their own enrichment.
Many of Europe’s African colonies come to mind. Some individuals could make a lot of money from stuff like rubber or cocoa, but conquering and administering far away places is expensive and for the state it was mostly a net drain. What did France get out of Chad for example? A bit of cotton.
Thank you very much for this very informative essay. I think (but lack the expertise to really KNOW) that oil produced from the Canadian Oil Sands is of a similar API gravity to that produced by Venezuela. Assuming this is the case, logistics and refining challenges are similarly complicated and finding new customers, new refining resources, and new logistics mechanisms seems a very large task. Those who think that Canada can simply build a new pipeline next week and ship product to Asia (which as I understand it currently receives less challenging product from the Saudis, Russians and others) might be naively optimistic. And none of this addresses the Pacific Rim countries migration towards electrification, which over the next fifteen years will greatly reduce demand their demand for refinanced product. It’s kind of cool that Trump would blithely commit his acts for war without any clear plan for what will be done in the immediate aftermath. I’ve no doubt that Rubio’s target is Cuba.
Regarding your Canadian pipeline comment we refine a great deal of the oil sands product on site. And there is a great amount of various petroleum products located in other parts of Ab as well a a huge amount of nat gas . Will the pipelines (plural theres a lng line planned as well) go in tomorrow? Of course not, but the products that are produced in Canada wont be the issue
Before Trump closed the doors regarding Cuba, that country was slowly but clearly sliding toward a more moderate relationship with the US. Cuba has been developing tourism properties on its north shore. The whole of the Caribbean basin has probably worried what would happen were Cuba to be fully open to American tourism. The message from this Maduro episode to the Cuban leadership is clear: Move to the right, be less socialist, and cut deals to open the flow of money.
There was an excellent account of the destruction of Venezuela's oil industry under Chavez on FP from 2018: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/16/how-venezuela-struck-it-poor-oil-energy-chavez/ Chavez's understanding of the country's greatest economic asset was described by one observer: “His was a completely encyclopedic ignorance.” Probably only matched by Trump's who has no clue what he's getting into and shares Chavez's contempt for legality and the value of human capital.
I agree, just more performative lurching about by trump regime In furtherance of his fantasy of 19th century “spheres of influence.” he gets the western hemisphere, Putin gets as much of Europe as he can conquer, Xi gets most of Asia. All imperial powers get their own sandboxes and peace will reign, just like it did just before two world wars. Fiona Hill said that Putin offered to swap Venezuela for Ukraine back in 2019. Other factors to consider: Venezuela has at least $100 billion in debts, it will cost at least that much to repair extraction infrastructure, its heavy crude is uneconomical to produce, the population will naturally be hostile to colonialism, there are at least 30k Cubans in country (Cuba is dependent on VZ oil), there seems to be no governance plan other than leaving the old regime in power minus Maduro. IOW, typical trump clusterfuck.
Shouldn't we also mention the oil bonanza of Venezuela's tiny southern neighbour, Guyana, where US companies are already heavily committed and which Maduro threatened to invade last year? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/15/guyana-venezuela-attack-essquibo
Where's the incentive for US oil majors to take a punt on a perennial basketcase like Venezuela given the instability and uncertainty and the previous pain they've suffered there?
What an in-depth insider analysis of the what’s behind the PR curtain. Such curtain as the regime has cobbled together so far…
This was really interesting and informative. Thank you! I trust your scholarship on this issue, but I kind of wonder if a little bit of “both” is what’s going on? Trump loves violence and acting like a mafia boss, but he also doesn’t seem like much of a details guy; maybe he doesn’t realize/understand the complexities around oil manufacturing and etc. and believes there’s loads of “black gold” there? I believe Venezuela also has large supplies of rare earth minerals, too? Also, this is just a curiosity of mine but my understanding is that oil from the U.S. tends to be heavy crude also, but our energy infrastructure isn’t really set up to use it in our country so we export it. Is this true? This has always struck me as kind of odd?
US oil production has been of the lighter, more valuable grade (~40 deg API, https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_api_adc_mbblpd_m.htm), particularly oil from the Permian. US refineries, by contrast, are generally set up to process heavy crude oil from places like Venezuela and Mexico, built around the time when the US was a net crude importer. So, your assumption is the correct one, that US exports oil that doesn't line up with its refining capacity, but it is so because the domestic crude is light, not heavy. Having said that, lighter crude can be more easily processed, across refinery types.
Thank you!
Apropos
US oil refiners gear up for comeback of Venezuelan crude
https://www.ft.com/content/574fb50d-e26c-4d20-ba7a-99e9831f292c?shareType=nongiftUS oil refiners gear up for comeback of Venezuelan crude
I think your assessment of Trump's grand film script cosplay events is acute.
Adam, you’ve analyzed the geology (the mud) and the finance (the bond), but you missed the decisive variable: The Metallurgy (the machine).
The "Industrial Stomach" for Venezuelan bitumen isn't just "generic refineries." It is specifically the massive Delayed Cokers concentrated on the US Gulf Coast (PADD 3). These complex assets were engineered over 30 years with billions in CapEx specifically to crack Venezuelan Merey (16° API).
Here is the Arbitrage Reality: For the past 7 years, sanctions created a massive Thermodynamic Inefficiency:
System A (USGC): The world's most efficient heavy-oil processors were starved, forced to buy expensive Canadian WCS or ill-fitting light sweet crude, destroying diesel margins.
System B (China): They (specifically Shandong Teapots) became the "buyer of last resort," shipping this heavy asphalt across the Pacific—a logistical absurdity that only worked because of the extreme discount.
The "Monroe Doctrine" revival is not about politics; it is about Industrial Re-coupling. The US is not just reclaiming "sovereignty"; it is reclaiming Feedstock Fit. The goal is to stop the thermodynamic waste of shipping Venezuelan oil to China and restore the natural industrial marriage between the Orinoco Belt and the Texas Coast.
The Hook: China doesn't actually need this oil (They have Russia/Iran). But the US Gulf Coast cannot survive without it. This isn't an invasion; it's a supply chain fix. Ref https://chinarbitrageur.substack.com/p/venezuela-and-the-arctic-two-ways?r=71ctq6
See discussions from Energi Media on what it would take to rebuild oil industry and why it makes little sense for an oil producing company like US to bother. Reality is simple: Trump et al are grasping for new territory, like a dog chasing a car.
That puts a lot into context. Thank you.
Thanks!
You didn’t mention Trump's donor buddy Paul Singer vulture fund's 2025 purchase of CITGO, which owns those gulf coast refineries setup to process Venezuelan crude.