The Latest on Venezuela: Legal Issues, Oil Production, and More
January 5, 2026
AirTalk (LAist 89.3)
Andrew Campbell, Energy Institute Executive Director, explains on AirTalk (LAist 89.3) that despite Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, low global oil prices, high production costs, degraded infrastructure, and political instability make renewed large-scale U.S. investment in its oil industry economically unrealistic.
“So the situation right now in global oil markets is that the market is well supplied relative to the demand. Oil prices are quite modest. They’re the lowest they’ve been in the last three years, and have been there for quite some time. That’s despite the turmoil with the Russian Ukraine conflict with really upset oil markets for a period of time. The markets have settled down, supply responded, coming from the Middle East, and a lot from North America, the United States, in particular. So prices are very modest right now. This isn’t a period of time when oil companies are looking for high cost sources of oil production, and Venezuela is a high cost source of oil production.”
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