Following the 3 January US attack on Venezuela and the subsequent abduction of its president, Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump declared that American companies would be “going into Venezuela to get the oil,” fuelling speculation that the military intervention wasn't as much about law enforcement as it was about geopolitics and get US hands on the country's resource wealth.
Home to the world's largest-proven oil reserves and vast, largely undeveloped critical mineral wealth, the country ranks among the most resource-rich in the world.
Venezuela is believed to have 300 billion barrels of crude oil concentrated primarily in the Orinoco Belt. Output, which exceeded 3 million barrels per day in the late 1990s, fell below 1 million by the early 2020s due to underinvestment, loss of skilled labour, and USand allied sanctions restricting access to finance, technology, insurers, and buyers.
Beyond oil, Venezuela possesses major deposits of iron ore, bauxite, gold, and nickel, as well as copper, zinc, and rare-earth elements, concentrated in the disputed Essequibo region, which lies within the Guayana Shield. It also hosts Latin America’s largest gold reserves and claims world-scale nickel and copper potential, as well as coltan and thorium-bearing sands.
