Industry consultant Enverus has predicted that Venezuela will increase oil production 50% and hit 1.5 million barrels a day by 2035 following the capture of long-time leader Nicolas Maduro by the Trump administration.
In its most bullish scenario, Enverus envisions Venezuela’s production tripling to 3 million barrels per day over the next decade.
However, Enverus has predicted that the 30-50 million barrels that Trump ordered Venezuela to relinquish to the U.S. will not have a major impact on global markets.
“Even with accelerated sanctions relief, we still see 1–2 million barrels per day of global oversupply in the first half of 2026 and limited incremental volumes from Venezuela,” Al Salazar, head of macro research at Enverus, said in a statement.
Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves (around 303 billion barrels) but production has collapsed from over 3 million barrels per day in the late 1990s to below 1 million bpd today due to chronic underinvestment, mismanagement, and sanctions.
The existing oil infrastructure, including pipelines, wellheads, and refineries, is in severe disrepair and requires tens of billions of dollars in investment and years of work to restore. Many of the wells are inactive, and there has been no significant exploratory drilling in years.
Many analysts have predicted that actual efforts to boost Venezuela’s production to the 1970s peak of 3.5 mb/d will require more than $100 billion in international investment, infrastructure reconstruction, and resolution of political and legal uncertainties.
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump’s Venezuela pitch to oil executives to invest the vast sums required to revive the country’s flagging oil sector proved largely ineffectual. Exxon Mobil NYSE:XOM) CEO Darren Woods offered the starkest assessment, calling the South American country “uninvestable” under its current commercial frameworks and hydrocarbon laws, while ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) CEO Ryan Lance also gave Trump a reality check, informing him his company lost billions of dollars when it exited the country under the Chavez regime.
On the contrary side, Hilcorp‘s Jeff Hildebrand said his company is ready to go rebuild Venezuela’s energy infrastructure, while Chevron (NYSE:CVX) said it can ramp up its Venezuela production of 240K bbl/day “100% essentially effective immediately”.
By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com
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