These are the key facts about the oil and mining sectors of Venezuela, whose President Nicolas Maduro was captured by US forces on Saturday, according to US President Donald Trump.
Reserves
Venezuela has the world’s largest estimated oil reserves, but its crude output remains at a fraction of capacity due to decades of mismanagement, lack of investment and sanctions, official data shows.
Venezuela holds about 17% of global reserves or 303-billion barrels, ahead of Opec (Opec leader Saudi Arabia, according to the London-based Energy Institute.
Its reserves are made up mostly of heavy oil in the Orinoco region of central Venezuela, making its crude expensive to produce, but technically relatively simple, according to the US government’s energy department. In 2019, Maduro and Delcy Rodriguez, who was then the country’s vice-president and is now acting president, announced a five-year mining plan aimed at boosting mineral extraction as an alternative to oil production.
The year prior, Venezuela’s government released data on mineral deposits that used key mining industry terms interchangeably, including reserve and resource. That makes it difficult to ascertain whether Caracas knew its full mining potential.
A reserve is an estimate of the volume of a mineral that can be economically produced. A resource is the volume of a mineral estimated in an entire region, whether or not it can be economically produced.
The 2018 report, which was billed as a “minerals catalogue” for potential investors and published on Venezuela’s mining ministry website, estimated coal reserves of roughly 3-billion tonnes and 407,885 tonnes of nickel reserves.
That same report estimated a gold resource of 644 tonnes, an iron ore resource of 14.68-billion tonnes — while acknowledging much of that is a speculative estimate — and a bauxite resource of 321.5-million tonnes. In 2021, Venezuela’s government published a map of mineral reserves based on data compiled in 2009. That map showed reserves of antimony, copper, nickel, coltan, molybdenum, magnesium, silver, zinc, titanium, tungsten and uranium, although it did not list volumes.
The country does not appear to have sizeable reserves of rare earths, a grouping of 17 minor metals used to make magnets that turn power into motion. Rare earths are a subset of critical minerals.
Production
Venezuela was a founding member of Opec with Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Its struggles with electricity production have repeatedly hampered mining and oil operations.
The country was producing as much as 3.5-million barrels per day of crude in the 1970s, which at the time represented over 7% of global oil output. Production fell below 2-million bpd during the 2010s and averaged some 1.1-million bpd in 2025 or just 1% of global production. That’s roughly the same production as the US state of North Dakota.
“If developments ultimately lead to a genuine regime change, this could even result in more oil on the market over time. However, it will take time for production to recover fully,” said Arne Lohmann Rasmussen from Global Risk Management.
If regime change is successful, Venezuela’s exports could grow as sanctions are lifted and foreign investment returns, said MST Marquee analyst Saul Kavonic.
“History shows that forced regime change rarely stabilises oil supply quickly, with Libya and Iraq offering clear and sobering precedents,” said Jorge Leon, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy.
Trump told Fox News on Saturday the US would be very strongly involved in Venezuela’s oil sector. The operational status of the mines tied to Maduro’s five-year plan is not clear. However, Maduro’s National Council for Productive Economy last month said national production of gold, coal and iron ore grew in the first three quarters of 2025, without providing figures.
Venezuela nationalised its gold sector in 2011. The government also controls iron and steel maker CVG. Reuters reported last October that Venezuela had restarted coal production and aimed to export more than 10-million tonnes of the mineral in 2025. It is not clear if the government hit that target. In 2019, the US Geological Survey estimated that Venezuela produced 100,000 tonnes of coal from 731-million tonnes of reserves.
Much of the country’s production of minerals, including nickel, bauxite, iron ore, and gold, has fallen alongside oil in the past decade.
Joint ventures
Venezuela nationalised its oil industry in the 1970s, creating Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA).
During the 1990s, Venezuela took steps to open the sector to foreign investment. Following the election of Hugo Chavez in 1999, Venezuela mandated majority PDVSA ownership of all oil projects. Exxon and Conoco departed Venezuela in the 2000s and their assets were expropriated.
PDVSA set up ventures in the hope of boosting production, including with Chevron, China National Petroleum Corporation, ENI, Total and Russia’s Rosneft. Maduro threatened in 2023 to license mines in a region subject to ownership dispute with neighbouring Guyana. Maduro’s government since at least 2016 had supported artisanal gold mining in the Venezuelan Amazon to bring in revenue.
Exports and refining
The US used to be the main buyer of Venezuelan oil but since the introduction of sanctions, China has become the main destination in the last decade.
Venezuela owes about $10bn to China after it became the largest lender under late president Hugo Chavez.
Venezuela repays loans with crude transported in three very large crude carriers previously co-owned by Venezuela and China. Two of those supertankers were approaching Venezuela in December when Trump announced a blockade of all tankers going in and out of the country.
The vessels are now waiting for instructions, according to PDVSA documents and shipping data, as Venezuelan exports have been mostly halted.
Trump told Fox News on Saturday that China would get the oil, without elaborating. Russia has also loaned Venezuela billions of dollars, but the exact amount is not clear.
PDVSA also owns significant refining capacity outside the country, including CITGO in the US, but creditors are battling to gain control of it through longstanding legal cases in US courts.
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