According to Western Journal, the fall of the socialist regime in Caracas has revived a long-dormant question in conservative policy circles: whether Venezuela’s vast but mismanaged oil reserves can be harnessed to strengthen American energy security and restore a measure of stability to global markets.
Once a titan of global energy, Venezuela has seen its oil production collapse to a fraction of its former output after the late Hugo Chávez imposed sweeping nationalization and ideological control over the industry, driving out expertise, capital and basic competence.
January 11, 2026
If President Donald Trump’s strategy succeeds, Washington could help rebuild Venezuela’s shattered oil sector and, in the process, tap its resources to refill America’s dangerously depleted Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), several energy economists and policy specialists told the Daily Caller News Foundation. That prospect stands in stark contrast to the approach of former President Joe Biden, whose administration aggressively drained the SPR in a bid to blunt political damage from soaring gasoline prices rather than to advance long-term national security.
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Biden authorized an unprecedented drawdown and sale of SPR crude in 2022, just as midterm elections approached and record-high fuel prices were hammering household budgets and Democratic poll numbers. After releasing roughly 200 million barrels in the run-up to those elections, his administration continued to lean on the emergency stockpile to suppress pump prices ahead of the 2024 race, effectively turning a strategic asset into a short-term political tool.
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Energy analysts have repeatedly warned that the scale of Biden’s withdrawals could leave the United States exposed for years. Numerous experts have cautioned that it may take “decades” to restore the SPR to its prior levels, with some telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that the former administration’s actions created a serious national security vulnerability by weakening America’s buffer against war, embargo or supply shocks.
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“The Strategic Petroleum Reserve can serve not only a militarily strategic interest, but also an economically strategic interest,” EJ Antoni, chief economist at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation, underscoring the broader role the reserve can play in a volatile world. Antoni argued that a disciplined effort to refill the SPR would not only bolster national defense, but could also allow the federal government to establish a price floor in the event of an oil glut, thereby supporting smaller producers and American investors against predatory pricing from foreign state-owned giants.
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For now, most of Venezuela’s crude exports are flowing eastward to China, a geopolitical rival that has eagerly exploited the vacuum created by years of U.S. sanctions and diplomatic disengagement. Some energy policy experts are cautiously optimistic that if Trump’s plan to “run” or otherwise partner with the Latin American nation comes to fruition, Washington could eventually redirect those flows, using Venezuelan barrels to benefit American refiners, U.S. consumers and, ultimately, the Venezuelan people themselves.
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Yet the prospect of revitalizing Venezuela’s oil industry raises a host of practical and political questions. Several industry insiders have previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that American firms remain wary of committing major capital under the current uncertainty, mindful of the country’s long record of expropriation, corruption and arbitrary rule under socialist leadership.
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David Blackmon, an energy and policy writer who spent four decades in the oil and gas sector, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that U.S. dominance of Venezuela’s oil industry would create a rare opportunity to rebuild America’s emergency reserves. However, he emphasized that any such effort would be slowed by layers of federal bureaucracy and logistical constraints, meaning that even under favorable conditions, refilling the SPR with Venezuelan crude would likely take many months.
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Trump has already signaled that his administration views replenishing the SPR as a priority, pledging in his inaugural address that the United States would restore its strategic cushion. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has since confirmed that the process will be lengthy, noting that it will take years to fully refill the reserve, even as the Department of Energy in November advanced a modest plan to acquire one million barrels as an initial step.
Within the industry, the new opening in Venezuela has not yet triggered a rush to link commercial plans directly to SPR replenishment. One industry source, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the Venezuela development has not prompted American companies to explore national reserve strategies, adding that the administration’s intent to rebuild the SPR is not contingent on Venezuelan supply.
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Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, stressed that the rule of law will be the decisive factor in whether U.S. capital flows into the country. He told the Daily Caller News Foundation that “U.S. companies will not commit serious capital to Venezuela without a credible reset on rule of law,” a pointed reminder that no amount of resource potential can overcome a fundamentally hostile or unstable legal environment.
Isaac further observed that “the near-term benefit is mostly about refinery optimization and security of supply, not a dramatic global price collapse.” Over the longer term, however, he suggested that a durable U.S.–Venezuela partnership could yield critical resource access at discounted rates, strengthening American energy independence while undercutting the leverage of adversarial producers such as Russia and Iran.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation, highlighted the potential market impact of a credible expectation of increased Venezuelan output. She told the Daily Caller News Foundation that “expectations of greater supply from Venezuela will lower the prices of oil and make it easier and less expensive to fill the SPR,” suggesting that even anticipation of future barrels can help ease price pressures.
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At the same time, Furchtgott-Roth raised a more fundamental question about whether the SPR still serves the same purpose it did in the 1970s. “I’m not sure if we need the SPR at all. The biggest SPR we have is right under our feet,” she told the Daily Caller News Foundation, adding, “The SPR was conceived of when the United States had very little oil production… Times have changed.”
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The SPR was created in 1975 in the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo and the broader energy crisis of the early 1970s, designed “primarily to reduce the impact of disruptions in supplies of petroleum products and to carry out obligations of the United States under the international energy program,” according to the Department of Energy. Since then, the shale revolution has transformed the United States from a vulnerable importer into the world’s leading oil producer by 2018, dramatically reducing the likelihood of the kind of supply shock that once justified a massive government-controlled stockpile.
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Trump and his allies have embraced that transformation as a mandate to unleash domestic production, championing a policy of “energy dominance” rather than energy dependence. They have repeatedly rallied supporters with the call to “drill, baby, drill,” arguing that robust American production is the surest path to affordable energy, economic growth and geopolitical leverage over hostile regimes.
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“President Trump’s energy dominance agenda has already brought gas prices down across the country, while gradually replenishing the SPR, and they will continue to drop as we unleash American energy,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the Daily Caller News Foundation before America’s capture of Maduro. Her comments framed the administration’s approach as a direct repudiation of Biden-era climate and regulatory policies, which conservatives argue strangled domestic output and drove up costs for working families.
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“Joe Biden’s disastrous green energy policies sent gas prices soaring across the country, making the past four years painfully unaffordable for Americans filling their gas tanks to commute to work, take their children to school, and travel during the summer and holiday seasons,” Rogers continued.
“In a desperate attempt to provide an illusion of relief during his 2024 campaign, Joe Biden irresponsibly depleted our Strategic Petroleum Reserve — shamelessly jeopardizing our economic and national security.”
Trump, for his part, has moved quickly to frame the new oil arrangement with Caracas as a win for American workers and manufacturers. Writing Wednesday on Truth Social, he declared, “I have just been informed that Venezuela is going to be purchasing ONLY American Made Products, with the money they receive from our new Oil Deal,” a claim that, if borne out, would tie Venezuela’s economic recovery directly to U.S. industry rather than to Chinese or Russian suppliers.
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A Department of Energy fact sheet released the same day underscored the scale and immediacy of the planned cooperation. The document stated that the energy partnership with Venezuela means “oil sales begin immediately with the anticipated sale of approximately 30 — 50 million barrels. They will continue indefinitely,” signaling that Washington envisions a sustained commercial relationship rather than a one-off transaction.
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For conservatives, the stakes extend beyond barrels and balance sheets to the broader ideological contest in the Western Hemisphere. The collapse of Maduro’s socialist experiment, combined with a potential U.S.-led revival of Venezuela’s energy sector, offers a powerful counterexample to the left-wing economic models still championed in parts of Latin America and within segments of the American political class.
Whether the United States ultimately uses Venezuelan crude to rebuild the SPR, to optimize refinery operations, or simply to diversify supply away from hostile regimes, the shift marks a decisive break from the Biden-era posture of managed decline and green mandates.
With Maduro in custody, a pro-energy administration in Washington and a resource-rich nation desperate for stability and investment, the question now is whether the rule of law, market discipline and strategic foresight can prevail over the legacy of socialism that brought Venezuela to its knees.
