President Donald Trump intensified his efforts to expand oil production by claiming control of Venezuela’s vast crude resources, in a move that threatens to worsen the environmental risks faced by a rapidly warming planet.
Energy experts say it’s hard to quantify how much additional oil production would occur under Trump’s goal of revitalizing Venezuela’s degraded energy infrastructure, or how long it would take. The end result would almost certainly be bad for the climate — and likely worsened by Venezuela’s unusually carbon-intensive production process. Yet a wide range of uncertainties make it difficult to calculate the environmental impact.
It’s unclear to what extent U.S. oil companies will invest in the country, or how increased Venezuelan production would affect the global market. And then, there’s a shortage of emissions information from the country itself.
“Very little data is available on Venezuelan oil operations,” said Adam Brandt, a professor of energy science engineering at Stanford University.
