Venezuela has heavy oil, it's all about that:
"drug problem" is just excuse. It's another oil war for USA.
I work in Oil & Gas. This guy's take is missing important details and ultimately the math doesn't add up. The idea that this is a "blood for oil" war is nonsense.
The US imported more oil than it produced from about 1995 to 2012, but those numbers flipped with the shale revolution and have continued to trend in opposing directions. We've also recently hit the point where we're almost producing as much oil as we consume, and we're now the #1 exporter of refined petroleum products. While it's true that the percentage of heavy sour we import has gone up relative to the other types of crude, the total volume of crude we import has been declining for almost 20 years.
Take a look at the current market conditions in the US - Natural Gas is dirt cheap because it's basically a waste byproduct that comes out when we're extracting oil from shale. That's lead to some of the cheapest electricity costs in the world. Along with that, our gasoline prices are currently on the low end of recent history. I could see this "blood for oil" argument if we were in the midst of an energy crisis, but we're not. We're in an energy glut.
Venezuela produces something like a million barrels a day, and their infrastructure is suffering from corruption and incompetence. Anyone who wants to increase their production is going to have to make massive investments of time, people, equipment, and money to bring everything up to a point where they could produce 2-3 million barrels. And doing that in a dodgy foreign country where they have no influence over the politics, and the next US Administration might flip on a dime and bug out makes no real sense. Not to mention Trump's own unpredictable policies.
On top of the risks for businesses looking to invest in a place like Venezuela, there's just no need when they can keep drilling here in the US. Our production ability is no where near tapped out. There's plenty more to do here. There's no need to go start a war to get their oil. It's true that refineries are expensive, but the cost to build new locations that are tooled to deal with light sweet crude is a hell of a lot less than the risks of investing in Venezuela.
Seriously, this is not the reason for this war. The numbers just don't add up.