The interviewed educated people by this renowned news website explains perfectly the situation.
What is interesting is the kind of oil that lake macaraibo harbours and that Trump really is combining business with geopolitics.
The Trump administration desperately wants to prevent that China is going to exploit the oil fields and gets a stronger political grasp in Venezuela, and the Trump administration wants those oilfields.
This of course because the USA will increasingly only have shale oil and shale gas in the US soil.
It is original in dutch but i have provided a to English translated link :
Het zal ingewikkeld worden om de Venezolaanse olie op een winstgevende manier uit de grond te halen, zeggen experts. Of zit er meer achter Trumps olie-obsessie?
nos-nl.translate.goog
Small excerpt from text :
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Let's go back in time. Thanks to enormous oil discoveries and with the help of the US, Venezuela became one of the first major oil states in the last century. "In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, this country accounted for 15 percent of global oil production," says energy specialist Jilles van den Beukel (HCSS).
But Venezuela's previous president, Hugo Chávez, believed that American companies were earning far too much and his country very little. At the beginning of this century, he nationalized major oil projects without compensating the companies. "That's why Trump still talks about 'stolen oil,'" says Van den Beukel.
Most American oil companies refused to cooperate with the new policy and left Venezuela. Chávez's successor, Maduro, continued his predecessor's course, much to the dissatisfaction of the US and other countries. They imposed sanctions on Venezuela, making it very difficult for the country to sell its oil.
On top of that, Chávez and later Maduro replaced many people at the national oil company PDVSA "with people hired for their loyalty and not for technical knowledge," says Van den Beukel.
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Light vs. heavy oil
But that could prove difficult. Venezuelan soil contains so-called heavy oil, which is difficult to extract. Van den Beukel: "You have light oil that flows like water. And you have heavy oil, which flows more like tar. Making oil products from that isn't exactly a very clean and climate-friendly process."
Competing with countries fortunate enough to have access to light oil is therefore difficult. Experts say there's considerable global demand for heavy oil, but the high extraction costs and severely outdated equipment in Venezuela make it difficult to make production profitable. "Much of the oil infrastructure is outdated, missing, or broken," says Rapier. "This can't be resolved quickly."
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Getting everything operational again could take decades and cost between €50 and €70 billion, says energy expert Lucia van Geuns (HCSS). "There's hardly any knowledge or expertise left in Venezuela regarding oil field production and management."
Van den Beukel: "American oil companies will think twice before investing even a little bit in this."
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Original in dutch:
Het zal ingewikkeld worden om de Venezolaanse olie op een winstgevende manier uit de grond te halen, zeggen experts. Of zit er meer achter Trumps olie-obsessie?
nos.nl