U.S. plans to revive oil extraction in Venezuela risk having a disproportionate impact on the Planet’s climate balance. And not only because of the immediate amount of barrels that would return to the market, but also because of the weight this choice would have on an ever-shrinking space: the global carbon budget still available.
According to an exclusive analysis conducted by ClimatePartner for the British newspaper The Guardian, the expansion of Venezuelan production could come to consume about 13 percent of the world’s emissions budget by 2050, compatible with the goal of containing global warming to within 1.5 °C. A single country, with a single fossil supply chain, would thus absorb a significant share of the margin remaining for the entire Planet.
What is the carbon budget
The concept of a carbon budget is central to the climate debate, but it often remains abstract. In simple terms, it indicates the maximum amount of carbon dioxide that can still be emitted globally while maintaining a realistic probability of not exceeding a certain threshold of average temperature rise. For climate scientists, 1.5 °C represents the limit beyond which the risks of extreme events, loss of ecosystems and social instability increase dramatically.
Venezuela’s proven oil reserves are the largest in the world, at least on paper. If they were fully exploited, they alone would be enough to deplete the entire 1.5 °C compatible carbon budget. A scenario considered unlikely, in part because the country’s oil industry today is scarred by crumbling infrastructure and years of international sanctions.
The intervention of the United States
However, the context has changed rapidly. After the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro by U.S. special forces and his relocation to New York, U.S. President Donald Trump openly urged oil companies to invest $100 billion to boost Venezuelan production. “We extract figures in terms of oil like few people have seen,” he told industry executives.
ClimatePartner has modeled a scenario that predicts an increase in production of 0.5 million barrels per day by 2028 and further growth to 1.58 million barrels per day between 2035 and 2050. Even so, it would remain well below the 3.5 million barrels per day achieved in the 1990s, during the country’s last major oil boom.
Yet the climate impact would be enormous: that same “moderate” scenario alone would consume 13 percent of the global residual carbon budget, the equivalent of nearly ten years of total EU emissions.
The most polluting crude oil
What makes the Venezuelan case particularly critical is not just the quantity of oil, but its quality. According to industry estimates, that extracted in Venezuela is the most carbon-intensive crude oil in the world. It is a heavy, dense oil with a high sulfur content, requiring much more energy-intensive extraction and refining processes than conventional crudes.
A study by S&P Global Platts Analytics found that the Orinoco Belt fields have by far the highest carbon intensity of all the major oil regions. The comparison is stark: about 1,460 kilograms of CO₂ equivalent per barrel of oil equivalent, compared to 1.6 kilograms at Norway’s Johan Sverdrup field. The report speaks of “extreme” intensity, hardly sustainable in a world constrained by ever-shrinking carbon budgets.
