Announcing the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a raid by US military forces at the weekend, Donald Trump made no secret of his ambitions to revive the South American nation’s ailing oil industry.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure … and start making money for the country,” the US president told a press conference on Saturday, saying the US would “run” Venezuela.
Venezuela has the largest proven crude oil reserves of any country in the world, but production in the largely state-controlled industry has fallen sharply over the past decade amid rampant corruption, mismanagement and crippling sanctions.
What are the climate risks of an oil production boost?
A significant production boost would unleash vast amounts of planet-heating greenhouse gases, particularly because Venezuela’s tar-like heavy oil requires energy-intensive extraction and processing techniques.
The Venezuelan oil industry’s methane emissions are also among the highest in the world per unit of oil produced, as excess gas is routinely burned rather than captured. Additionally, the country’s abandoned oil wells released at least 3 million metric tons of methane last year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
“If oil production goes up, climate change will get worse sooner, and everybody loses, including the people of Venezuela,” John Sterman, an expert in climate and economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Climate Home News.
“The climate damages suffered by Venezuela, along with other countries, will almost certainly outweigh any short-term economic benefit of selling a bit more oil,” Sterman said.
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How likely is a new Venezuelan oil boom?
Venezuela’s distinctive dense and sticky oil, coupled with wider energy market dynamics, mean experts do not expect a surge in output in the short, or even longer, term.
Getting the oil out of the ground would require eye-watering levels of investment to bring in the necessary technology and expertise. Restoring Venezuela’s oil production to its late-1990s peak of 3 million barrels a day would require $20 billion more in capital investment than the top five US oil majors combined spent globally in 2024, according to consultancy Rystad Energy.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told journalists “we are pretty certain that there will be dramatic interest from Western companies”, without naming any specific firms. By Tuesday, the three biggest US oil companies, ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips, had not yet held any discussions with the Trump administration about Maduro’s removal, Reuters reported, but a meeting was expected by the end of the week.
According to a BloombergNEF analysis, the three US companies have cheaper and more stable investment options in Guyana, which borders Venezuela, along with Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. It said the companies would need “stronger incentives” to lift production in Venezuela.
Does the world need more oil from Venezuela?
Oil majors might need a lot of convincing to pour cash into projects that could take years to yield results, especially when the world is in the midst of an oil glut. In 2025, crude oil production significantly outpaced demand, pushing prices down to the lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), a US federal agency.
With oil demand expected to peak around 2030 under a scenario based on governments’ stated climate policies, as outlined by the IEA, any increase in Venezuelan oil output risks entering a market that may be smaller and more competitive by the time new supplies come online.
In China, currently the biggest importer of Venezuelan crude, oil demand for fuel production has already flatlined due to the strong adoption of electric vehicles.
Does the US have other reasons to control Venezuela’s oil?
Geopolitics, rather than economics, might have played a bigger role in the US intervention.
Rubio said that while the US did not need Venezuela’s oil, it would not let the country’s oil industry be controlled by US adversaries, such as China, Russia and Iran.
“This is where we live, and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States,” Rubio said. “It’s as simple as that”.
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In response, Colombia’s environment minister Irene Vélez said on X that the US “attack” on Venezuela paved the way for “a new fossil colonialism and the end of peaceful multilateralism”.
A group of Latin American countries including Brazil, Mexico and Chile issued a statement expressing concern over “any attempt at governmental control, administration, or external appropriation of natural or strategic resources, which would be incompatible with international law”.
How can the world protect itself from militarism over fossil fuels?
Climate advocates say the lesson that countries reliant on fossil fuel imports should draw from Trump’s actions in Venezuela is to shift away from oil and gas as fast as possible.
Mads Christensen, executive director at Greenpeace International, said “the only safe path forward is a just transition away from fossil fuels, one that protects health, safeguards ecosystems, and supports communities rather than sacrificing them for short-term profit”.
At COP30, more than 80 countries publicly endorsed the creation of a fossil fuel transition roadmap. The initiative will move its first steps this year under the Brazilian presidency, in partnership with the Colombian government, which will host the first global conference dedicated to the issue.
“This weekend’s events should be a nudge to them all to get to work this January and start drafting emergency plans to implement this,” said Mike Davis, chief executive of the Global Witness campaign group. “The longer they delay – and the fossil fuel lobbying machine will try and delay – the weaker their strategic positions will be.”
The post What would Trump’s Venezuela oil plans mean for climate change? appeared first on Climate Home News.
What would Trump’s Venezuela oil plans mean for climate change?
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
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None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines