The U.S. military’s seizure of Venezuela’s oil exports is unlikely to lower gasoline prices for consumers – as President Donald Trump has claimed – but could funnel billions of dollars to American oil companies that donated to Trump’s election, according to industry analysts.

“The refineries can benefit tremendously from this–not just from the free oil that they may be getting–but the type of oil,” said Paasha Mahdavi, an energy industry expert and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “But that benefit will not be passed on to consumers.”

Among the oil refinery owners who could benefit is billionaire Trump donor Paul Singer, founder of an investment management company that is buying Citgo Petroleum, a refining firm owned by Venezuela’s state oil company. Citgo has refineries in Texas and Louisiana that are already geared to process the kind of heavy crude oil produced by Venezuela. Singer donated about $8 million to Trump’s election campaign and $1 million to his inaugural committee.

Also positioned to potentially cash in are ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Chevron, which also gave millions to Trump’s political campaign. The first two companies have been seeking a combined $32 billion in reparations from Venezuela for seizing their oil drilling infrastructure in the country in 2007, after the nationalization of the country’s oil resources.

Chevron, based in Houston, could also benefit because it is the only U.S. oil company still drilling in Venezuela and also has a refinery on the U.S. Gulf Coast that is designed to handle heavy Venezuelan crude oil.

But the oil industry appears to be wary of re-entering and investing in a politically unstable country. And analysts are skeptical that U.S. consumers will benefit through lower gasoline prices anytime soon, despite promises by President Trump to the contrary. This is because Venezuelan oil plays such a small and declining role in the global market. Also, increasing output from the country’s neglected oil infrastructure will likely take many years and more than $100  billion, which oil companies are unlikely to invest themselves.

“The short answer is no,” gasoline consumers will not benefit, said Robert Kaufmann, an expert on the oil and gas industry and professor at Boston University. “It’s a world oil market, and Venezuela produces only 1 percent of that supply. So whether the U.S. controls that supply, or Russia, it doesn’t matter. There is one world price for oil, based on global supply and demand, and that’s what determines the price.”

However, Kaufmann added, if the Trump Administration is seizing Venezuelan tankers by force, compelling the country to surrender its oil, and giving that oil to U.S. refiners like Citgo for sale, the refining companies could profit. 

“The oil companies could make a fortune if they refine free crude oil into motor gasoline,” Kaufmann said.

Six Democratic U.S. Senators, including Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, announced on Jan. 8 that they are launching an investigation into the Trump Administration’s communications with oil company executives about military strikes in Venezuela before and after the capturing of President Nicolas Maduro. The lawmakers are seeking to find out if the administration launched the attack to benefit an industry that contributed heavily to Trump’s election. 

“We would like to know the extent to which U.S. oil and gas companies …had either advance knowledge of or the ability to shape American foreign policy decisions—especially given that Congress was kept in the dark concerning the use of force until after the strikes occurred,” the senators wrote.

Meeting with Trump on Friday at the White House were executives from Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Continental, Halliburton, HKN, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Trafigura, Vitol Americas, Repsol, Eni, Aspect Holdings, Tallgrass, Raisa Energy and Hilcorp.

Exxon CEO Darren Woods told Trump during the live-streamed meeting that Venezuela was “uninvestable” under current conditions. He said major changes would be needed before his company would return, after being kicked out of the socialist-run country twice before, in 1976 and 2007.

President Trump appeared to be angered by Woods’ candor, telling reporters afterwards that he’s “inclined to keep Exxon out” of Venezuela in retaliation for “playing too cute.”

Patrick De Haan, lead petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, said that the international price of oil is fairly low right now (below $60 per barrel), while the risk and cost of extracting more oil from Venezuela is high. In this market, he does not believe that U.S. oil companies will find it profitable to step up and invest their own money in extracting more oil out of Venezuela. Some economists believe such investments would require a price above $80 per barrel.

“Oil companies are not going to be lining up, investing billions of dollars in a high-risk country where regime change really hasn’t happened yet, and where in 2007, under Hugo Chavez, oil company assets were seized,” De Haan said. “With oil prices being at multi-year lows right now, there is very high risk and low rewards here.”

Skip York, an oil and gas expert and nonresident fellow at the Rice University Baker Institute’s Center for Energy Studies, predicted that Exxon and ConocoPhillips are both unlikely to go back into Venezuela without financial and political guarantees. Both companies lost billions of dollars when Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in the 1970s and 2000s.

“If you are Exxon, you say: ‘I’ve seen this movie twice – I saw it in 1976, and then I saw it again in 2007,’” York said. The company lost its assets in Venezuela in the country’s nationalization in 1976. Venezuela then reopened to foreign oil companies in the 1990s, then nationalized the industry again in 2007. “So they [Exxon] might have a bone to pick,” York said 

To help encourage oil companies, Trump has suggested that U.S. taxpayers might pay or reimburse oil companies for the cost of rebuilding Venezuela’s oil infrastructure. But it is unclear if Congress would approve such funding. 

“Congress must be on the lookout for Trump to offer any federal government guarantee to Big Oil that would force American taxpayers—or use the proceeds from purloined Venezuelan oil—to cover all or some of the risk of their investments in Venezuela,” Public Citizen said in a written statement. “A responsible Congress would stop any such scheme.”

Trump also on Jan. 9 signed an order meant to block Venezuelan oil revenue from being accessed by creditors or others suing the country’s government. 

Abhi Rajendran, director of oil markets research at Energy Intelligence, said that oil production from Venezuela – already down substantially, in part because of sanctions imposed by the first Trump Administration in 2017 and 2019 -- could continue to drop in the short term. This is because the country’s exports to China, Russian, and Iran have been halted by the U.S. Navy.

The impact on American gasoline prices are likely to be minimal if this oil supply is re-directed to the U.S., he said, although American refineries that are geared to process heavy crude oil could make a lot of profit – especially if they get free or discounted Venezuelan oil from the Trump Administration.

“Definitely the refiners stand to benefit from this, like Valero and Phillips 66 that have refineries on the Gulf Coast,” Rajendran said. “They are the big winners. And the one company that has the boots on the ground and the capacity to invest and ramp is Chevron, because they are already there in Venezuela.”

The biggest loser in all this will be the environment and the climate, according to John Sterman, an expert in climate and economics and co-director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative.

He predicts that if more oil is produced from Venezuela because of this military action, illegal immigration into the U.S. will also rise. This is because the greenhouse gases from burning more dirty Venezuelan oil will worsen the climate crisis and intensify poverty in Venezuela, Mexico, and other countries. This will push more refugees northward into the U.S.

“It’s going to make climate change worse and warming hurts everybody – and not just because of high temperature, but extreme weather, floods, droughts, hurricanes, expanded disease ranges, and lower agricultural productivity in many regions,” Sterman said. “What all of these things lead to is more migration of climate refugees, many of whom already are leaving their countries and are trying to get to places like the United States and the European Union. That creates political conflict and instability, which affects everybody.”

Lead photo: Fishermen ready the nets as oil tankers are docked at the Cardon refinery in Punta Cardon, Venezuela, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)