President Donald Trump has not been shy about sharing one of his motivations for the nighttime raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3: oil.

The South American nation sits on the largest proven oil reserves in the world, but after decades of economic upheaval and more recently, U.S. sanctions and a naval blockade, little of it is actually sold on the global market.

“The oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust, for a long period of time,” Trump said Saturday. “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, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”

Reuters reported Tuesday morning that the Trump administration is meeting with U.S. oil companies later this week to discuss their interest in providing the years of work and upward of $120 billion in investment experts estimate will be needed to boost crude oil production and exports from Venezuela.

The United States is the world’s leading producer of oil, and Texas leads the country’s production, with most of the state’s drilling in West Texas’ Permian Basin. So what does the sudden U.S. effort to drill Venezuelan oil mean for the Texas economy and its oil industry?

Not much, for now.

“The Permian has been the best place … to do business for years and we had a surrounding infrastructure that made that attractive,” said Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association.

Getting U.S. companies to produce Venezuelan oil is going to require “a massive infusion of capital and that has to be acquired from willing investors,” Staples said. “Considering the circumstances globally … that tells me it’s going to be years in the making.”

U.S. and Texas oil companies have largely been silent regarding Trump’s insistence that they would fund the rebirth of Venezuela’s oil industry.

Chevron, headquartered in Houston, is the only U.S. company still operating in Venezuela after former President Hugo Chávez in 2007 nationalized assets belonging to U.S. and other Western companies. The company has seen its share price rise in the aftermath of the U.S. military operation that brought Maduro and his wife to New York, where they face federal charges related to drug smuggling and weapons violations.

The company declined to speculate on future investments in the Latin American nation.

“Chevron remains focused on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets,” a Chevron spokesperson wrote in a statement. “We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.”

Lack of investment hurt Venezuelan oil production

Chevron and Exxon Mobil, based in Spring, are two of the world’s largest oil and gas extraction companies, with massive operations in Texas.

Production in the Permian Basin has increased in recent years following advances in drilling technology, namely fracking, that boosted daily capacity to 6 million barrels a day from less than 2 million a decade prior, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The industry is underpinned by a century of oil infrastructure investment in the state, including pipelines, refineries and electricity.

“For more than 100 years of operations, domestic producers in the Permian Basin have weathered wars, economic storms, pandemics and more,” Ben Shepperd, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, wrote in a statement.

Refiners like Marathon Petroleum, Phillips 66 and Valero Energy benefit from their proximity to the oil wells, operating massive refineries along the Gulf Coast.

Venezuela’s largest oil field, the Orinoco Belt, produces heavy oil that is more difficult to extract and is referred to as “sour” due to its high sulfur concentration. It’s cheaper than the Permian Basin’s lighter “sweet” crude but requires a far more expensive refining process to be used for premium fuels.

“President Trump's statements about American oil companies investing billions to rebuild Venezuela's deteriorated infrastructure align with the goal of restoring a once-reliable, proximate heavy crude source,” said Ed Longanecker, president of Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association. “However, the hurdles are significant and widely acknowledged.”

Venezuela’s oil production has dropped by two-thirds since its peak in 1999 despite sitting on one-fifth of the world’s reserves. Venezuela’s oil industry has been nationalized since 1976, but partnerships with foreign companies continued until the 2000s, when Chávez began to assert more state control, culminating in the 2007 seizure of assets from major foreign oil companies that caused most to leave the country.

Meanwhile, economic mismanagement and corruption starved the national oil company of needed investment over the course of decades. The U.S. slapped sanctions on Venezuela’s petroleum industry in 2017 during Trump’s first term, further destabilizing the industry and the nation’s economy.

For Venezuela’s oil exports to rival the world’s largest producers, it needs to expand both drilling and refining capacity because the crude oil is essentially useless until it is refined. U.S. sanctions have blocked Venezuelan crude from the Gulf Coast refineries — except for the 200,000 barrels a day produced by Chevron — forcing it to largely rely on India and China in recent years.

“The Permian Basin might be a comparison to tell you how growth could happen in Venezuela,” Staples said. “The distinction, though, is you have to have upstream production. You have to build the pipelines, and then you have to have the export capacity to move that product, all combined with a stable environment.”

Low oil prices are another barrier

Another obstacle to Trump’s vision is the current global oil market.

Ray Perryman, an economist and founder of Waco-based Perryman Group, said oil prices are currently low, trading around $60 a barrel — down from its most recent peak at $116 a barrel in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — due to a global oversupply and stagnant demand. Low oil prices discourage companies from investing in new drilling operations, further complicating the prospect of massive investment in Venezuela, he added.

However, global demand is expected to rise long term as the rise of artificial intelligence increases demand for energy globally and emerging nations continue to need more energy, Perryman said.

The companies operating refineries along the Gulf Coast stand to be the biggest winners if Venezuela opens up to U.S. companies as its heavier crude oil needs to be refined, Longanecker said.

A reliable, cheap and nearby supply of heavy oil in Venezuela could increase the profits for those refineries without directly competing with the Permian Basin's light crude oil production, Longanecker said.

Longanecker noted share prices for major Texas-linked refiners such as Valero Energy and Marathon Petroleum have risen in the days since the U.S. military operation in Venezuela.

The biggest loser could be one of the nation’s closest allies: Canada, which produces much of the heavy crude that the U.S. imports.

Disclosure: Ben Shepperd, the Permian Basin Petroleum Association and the Texas Oil & Gas Association have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.