Venezuela’s oil industry is at the center of an intensifying U.S. campaign to control crude exports after the capture of former President Nicolás Maduro last weekend, and now environmental experts are warning that an effort to increase production could carry climate and pollution costs. They argue that expanding output would mean more processing of Venezuela’s heavy, high-sulfur crude, more activity across aging assets, and higher risks of spills and methane emissions in ecosystems that have already absorbed years of damage.
Since then, Washington has moved to assert control over Venezuelan oil exports by seizing tankers it said were transporting crude in violation of U.S. sanctions. The U.S. has also signaled plans to redirect Venezuelan oil to global markets under U.S. oversight, even as industry analysts question how quickly the country could scale production. MSI previously reported that Venezuela’s vast oil reserves draw U.S. interest, but experts warned of major hurdles, including the practical challenge of reviving a system burdened by underinvestment.
The White House has said it plans to sell between 30 million and 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude worldwide, while not specifying a time frame. Under the administration’s approach, proceeds would be held in U.S.-controlled accounts, which it says would benefit both Venezuelans and Americans. Experts, however, emphasized that significantly expanding production would require years of investment and tens of billions of dollars to repair infrastructure that has deteriorated.
Paasha Mahdavi, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, described the condition of key facilities as a major constraint, saying, “You’ve got storage facilities literally sinking into the ground, broken wellheads and degraded infrastructure across the board.” Mahdavi added that even a near-term increase of about 1 million barrels a day—often cited as a goal—would add roughly 360 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year from production, and that pushing output to around 1.5 million barrels a day could drive annual emissions to about 550 million tons. He said emissions would be even larger once the oil is burned by consumers.
Other experts pointed to the nature of Venezuela’s crude itself as a driver of higher processing needs and emissions intensity. Diego Rivera Rivota, a senior research associate at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said the dense crude is difficult to handle, saying, “It’s very dense, very sloppy, very hard. And it’s also very sour.” He said the crude’s characteristics mean the industry requires “higher infrastructure” and uses more energy, making it “much more energy intensive” and “hence much more carbon intensive as well.” Rivera Rivota noted that many U.S. refineries were built decades ago to process this type of oil, which could make Venezuela’s crude fit existing capacity despite the added processing demands.
Environmental risks would likely extend beyond the climate impact of increased production. A 2025 International Energy Agency report, cited by experts in the AP story, found Venezuela’s methane emissions intensity was far above the norm, with upstream methane emissions estimated at roughly six times the world average. The report also estimated flaring intensity—natural gas burned to oil produced—at about 10 times typical global levels, a pattern critics say contributes to both emissions and local pollution.
The Venezuelan Political Ecology Observatory, an environmental watchdog, documented nearly 200 oil spills from 2016 to 2021 that it said were largely unreported by authorities. It also drew on satellite data from Global Forest Watch, which is hosted by the World Resources Institute, to show Venezuela has lost roughly 2.6 million hectares of tree cover over the past two decades, with drivers including agriculture, mining and fires; experts said oil activity has contributed to forest loss in some producing regions.
U.S. officials, according to the AP report, have emphasized control over oil sales, revenues and repairs rather than environmental safeguards or climate impacts. The White House referred questions from The Associated Press to the Department of Energy, which said in a statement that U.S. oil and gas companies that would revamp Venezuela’s oil industry had “the highest environmental standards.” The statement said, “As American investment in Venezuela increases, you can expect environmental conditions to improve.”
Still, experts said the current state of Venezuela’s systems raises concerns that a rapid push to raise output could prioritize volume over pollution controls. Patrick Galey, of the nonprofit Global Witness, said Venezuela’s oil system is among the most poorly maintained in the world after years of underinvestment, pointing to aging pipelines, storage facilities and widespread gas flaring that increase the risk of spills and methane leaks. Kevin Book, director of research at ClearView Energy Partners, said investment could bring new methane-capture and emissions-management technologies, arguing there could be “some potential relative environmental upside compared to status quo,” depending on assumptions about how oil demand would change.
In Venezuela, researchers described how environmental damage can persist even when production declines. Antonio de Lisio, an environmental professor and researcher at the Central University of Venezuela, said oil exploitation has long been tied to environmental damage and described pollution that has not been fully addressed. He said heavy-oil reserves sit in fragile plains crisscrossed by slow-moving rivers, and he warned that in morichales—palm-swamp wetlands—contamination can persist long periods. De Lisio said processing plants that use heat, chemicals and water to make heavy crude exportable pose additional risks, and he pointed to Lake Maracaibo as an example of an oil-polluted ecosystem, along with regions near the Paraguana refining complex and protected coastal parks such as Morrocoy, where pollution has affected marine life and coral reefs.
The debate, experts said, is not only about whether production can be expanded, but about whether the environmental costs of doing so can be contained in a country already facing a long history of spills, leaks and infrastructure degradation. De Lisio said the true environmental and social costs of Venezuela’s oil have “never been fully calculated,” adding, “If those costs were fully accounted for, we would see that continuing to produce oil is not the best business for Venezuela.”