🇺🇸🇻🇪 Marco Rubio, reiterates what Trump said yesterday (it wasn't a translation error): in the short term, they will not work with María Corina Machado but with Delcy Rodríguez because she is the one who has control:

"María Corina is fantastic, she's someone I've known for a long time, she's part of that whole movement, but the immediate reality is that, unfortunately, most of the opposition is not present in Venezuela," he explained.

"We have short-term issues that need to be addressed immediately," he added.

"Now there are other people in charge of the military and police apparatus there, they will have to decide which direction they want to take. We hope they will choose a different direction from the one Nicolás Maduro chose."

⚒️ 🇻🇪 🪨 The Venezuela situation goes well beyond oil and gas:

Venezuela currently holds an estimated 4 BILLION TONS of iron ore reserves.

Estimates show Venezuela's has the 12th-largest iron ore reserves in the world.

1 ton of iron ore is currently selling for $107, making these reserves worth ~$428 BILLION.

Iron ore producers often see high operating margins, sometimes exceeding 40-50%.

This means extracting these reserves could generate over $200 billion in profit.

That's nearly DOUBLE Nvidia's net income for the entire 2025.

The amount of wealth beneath Venezuela is staggering.

📎 KobeissiLetter

🛢 🇻🇪 ⚒️ Venezuela Currently Has:

1. 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, 34th largest in the world

2. 300 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, largest in the world

3. 4 billion tons of iron ore reserves, worth nearly $600 billion

4. 8,000+ tons of gold resources, the largest in Latin America

5. 500+ million tons of coal reserves

6. 2% of the world’s total renewable freshwater resources

7. Untapped strategic minerals including nickel, copper, and phosphates

Venezuela is now a “strategic” US asset.

📎 KobeissiLetter

🛢 🇺🇸 🇻🇪 Rubio on Venezuela:

"We do not need Venezuela’s oil. We have plenty of oil in the United States."

"What we are not going to allow is for the oil industry in Venezuela to be controlled by adversaries of the United States."

"You have to understand: why does China need Venezuela’s oil? Why does Russia need it? Why does Iran need it? They’re not even in this continent."

📎 Clash Report

📝 🇻🇪 🇺🇸 Philip Pilkington on X:
"I think we have some sense of the situation in Venezuela now. It looks like the Trump administration is attempting a somewhat novel high-risk pressure strategy because regime change is not currently possible.

📝 The first thing to note is that those of us - myself included - who thought regime change proper was not currently possible seem to have been correct. Trump has said as much. Machado and the opposition have limited credibility.

🤯 Under standard operating procedure that would have meant the pressure campaign would have rolled on for a while until the Trump administration got bored. But instead Trump pulled a new rabbit out of the hat: he increased the pressure significantly by capturing Maduro.

🪖Now it appears the strategy is to leave the Maduro regime intact and further pressure it to do what Trump wants. Right now that’s not looking great as the acting president is denouncing US actions and refusing to play ball. The US could capture her of course - and whoever replaces her and so on. But…

💥 After a while Venezuela will just collapse and become a failed state. This is what happened in Libya when the Obama administration killed Gaddafi and left a power vacuum. Shortly after, Europe was flooded with migrants and the terror attacks started. This destabilised Europe.

🌎 The US is now locked into the pressure strategy. But if it doesn’t work, Venezuela will collapse and the comsequences of a mid-sized failed state in Latin America will make themselves felt. The continent could become far more chaotic than Europe in such a scenario considering the extensive criminal networks already operating there, not to mention the current problems with immigration. A collapsed Venezuela could also lead to a string of regime collapses - from Colombia to Mexico."

📎 Philip Pilkington

📝 🇺🇸 🇻🇪 The most exteme "realpolitik" scenario is a Trump puppet Chavist government

PSUV stays in power, but they allow american Oil giants to extract and exploit the reserves

Humiliating both democratic opposition and anti-imperialists

📝 Arban: Given how swiftly they got Maduro, there was no resistance, the other top dawgs still remain in Venezuela, nobel prize lady thrown under the bus, this is the most likely outcome at this point.

📎 Antonio

🛢 🇺🇸 🇻🇪 Trump’s plan to seize and revitalize Venezuela’s oil industry faces major hurdles

Venezuela’s oil industry is in disrepair after years of neglect and international sanctions, so it could take years and major investments before production can increase dramatically. But some analysts are optimistic that Venezuela could double or triple its current output of about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day to return to historic levels fairly quickly.

“While many are reporting Venezuela’s oil infrastructure was unharmed by U.S. military actions, it has been decaying for many many years and will take time to rebuild,” said Patrick De Haan, who is the lead petroleum analyst at gasoline price tracker GasBuddy.

American oil companies will want a stable regime in the country before they are willing to invest heavily, and the political picture remained uncertain Saturday with Trump saying that the United States is in charge — while the current Venezuelan vice president argued, before Venezuela’s high court ordered her to assume the role of interim president, that Maduro should be restored to power.

⚡️ “The estimate is that in order for Venezuela to increase from one million barrels per day — that is what it produces today — to four million barrels, it will take about a decade and about a hundred billion dollars of investment,” Monaldi said.

Venezuela produces the kind of heavy crude oil that’s needed for diesel fuel, asphalt and other fuels for heavy equipment. Diesel is in short supply around the world because of the sanctions on oil from Venezuela and Russia and because America’s lighter crude oil can’t easily replace it.

Years ago, American refineries on the Gulf Coast were optimized to handle that kind of heavy crude at a time when U.S. oil production was falling and Venezuelan and Mexican crude was plentiful. So refineries would love to have more access to Venezuela’s crude because it would help them operate more efficiently, and it tends to be a little cheaper.

Boosting Venezuelan production could also make it easier to put pressure on Russia because Europe and the rest of the world could get more of the diesel and heavy oil they need from Venezuela and stop buying from Russia.

https://www.kltv.com/2026/01/04/trumps-plan-seize-revitalize-venezuelas-oil-industry-faces-major-hurdles/

🛢 🇻🇪 📝 The Venezuela plot thickens:

While Venezuela holds 303 BILLION barrels of oil reserves, much of this is HEAVY crude oil.

Texas and Louisiana also *happen* to have 6 of the LARGEST HEAVY crude oil refineries in the world.

What does this mean? Let us explain.

In the early 2000s, Venezuela was a MUCH larger oil producer than the US.

In fact, Venezuela produced 3 TIMES as much oil, at nearly 3.3 million barrels per day.

By 2020, Venezuela's production had declined to just 900K/day, while the US hit 5 million/day.

This is key.

First, Venezuela has been heavily sanctioned by the US for years.

This resulted in old infrastructure, hindering the ability to extract HEAVY crude oil.

Heavy oil is far more expensive to extract than light crude.

This requires advanced techniques like steam injection.

The US has become incredibly dependent on heavy crude oil.

In 1980, just 10-20% of US crude oil imports were heavy crude oil.

Today, the MAJORITY of US crude oil imports are heavy crude oil, at ~70%.

The US wants more heavy crude and Venezuela has BILLIONS of barrels of it.

Now, take a look at crude oil imports to the US:

Canada's share of imports has surged from ~15% to ~60% of US imports.

Meanwhile, Venezuela's imports to the US have effectively stalled.

If the US can restore these imports, it would be HIGHLY profitable for the US government.

Currently, Venezuela holds more oil reserves than any other country in the world.

They even hold 20% more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.

What's the "best" way to restore these massive heavy crude oil imports to the US?

Take control of the country's oil reserves.

And, it becomes even more strategic for the US.

Aside from Venezuela, Russia has some of the largest HEAVY crude oil reserves in the world.

Tapping into Venezuela's heavy crude oil reserves effectively further weakens Russia's influence.

This is also a geopolitical move.

📎 KobeissiLetter

📢 🇺🇸 🇬🇱 President Trump has declared that America needs Greenland for “national security.”

🇷🇺 🇨🇳 “We need Greenland for national security. If you take a look at Greenland… you have Russian and Chinese ships all over the place."

📎 AF Post

🇺🇸 🇻🇪 Rubio says US won’t govern Venezuela but will press changes through oil blockade

🛢 Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested Sunday that the United States would not take a day-to-day role in governing Venezuela other than enforcing an existing “oil quarantine” on the country, a turnaround after President Donald Trump announced a day earlier that the U.S. would be running Venezuela following its ouster of leader Nicolás Maduro.

https://apnews.com/live/us-venezuela-trump-maduro-updates-01-04-2026

⚠️🇻🇪🇺🇸 Donald Trump: "If (Delcy Rodríguez) doesn't do the right thing, she will pay a very high price, probably higher than Maduro"

https://alertas24.com/donald-trump-si-delcy-rodriguez-no-hace-lo-correcto-va-a-pagar-un-precio-muy-alto-probablemente-mayor-que-maduro/