With the increasing possibility of disruptions to the Middle East oil supply, I was asked an ~interesting~ question on how to solve it. Could foreign intervention in Venezuela open its oil supply as an alternative to Middle Eastern oil.
Before we look at Venezuela, we need to know who might be interested first. The US has its oil needs figured out, so it’s really only the Europeans that would consider this. There’s plenty of crude in Venezuela, but years of mismanagement have left infrastructure and fields in poor condition. Couple that with a host of security issues, political instability, and a heavily armed civilian population…and it’s definitely not a cakewalk.
Even if the Europeans were willing to make the massive investment to revamp the oil industry in Venezuela and put forth a substantial military presence to establish the order needed to make this possible, they would still need the sign off from the US…and that’s probably not going to happen without some major incentives.