Oil Prices & Venezuela: What Investors Need to Know for 2026

Where might opportunities exist for oil investors in 2026?

But it's not a big impact on the oil market at this time.

We're not relying upon the headlines to dictate the, the moves that we make.

Today's episode is a big one. As you probably already know, on January 3rd, 2026, US military forces captured Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and brought them to the US to face charges. And while these events, as you've probably seen all over your feed, have dominated the headlines, this is an investment show. So our focus today is not on politics but on the broader economic global implications of oil and how that impacts oil and gas investors today, mainly our investors. We've had a ton of phone calls, a ton of, uh, interest in what is going to happen to oil prices in the US today. Since then, Trump has emphasized US involvement in Venezuela's oil industry and suggested US oil companies could rebuild build production. I am joined today with the host of the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast and managing partners of Aspen Funds, Bob Fraser and Ben Fraser. Guys, I want to start here. Why are we talking about oil and gas in the context of Venezuela? If someone has just seen the headlines about capturing the Venezuelan president, why all of a sudden are we talking about oil and gas?

Yeah, great question. And Venezuela, while a little tiny country, has the world's largest oil reserves. The Orinoco Basin is largely untapped. I think some 300 billion barrels of oil. So it's just a massive, massive reserve. That said, it's not a big oil-producing nation. So it produces, you know, about 1 million barrels per day right now. So, so it's not— it has a big potential for impact, but it's not a big, big impact at this time.

Okay, so when President— when Donald Trump comes on and says, hey, we're going to have a very large United States— you know, he says we're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go and spend billions of dollars. You know, he talks about that first, but then he says they're going to turn over between 30 million and 50 million barrels of oil to the United States at market prices. That, that was a headline. In context, is that a lot or is that a little?

Yeah, it's a— it's not a lot. So the world consumes about 100 million barrels per day. 100 million barrels. So when he says $30 to $40 million. Well, that's a third of a day's demand of one day, uh, for the, for the entire year. So it's not a big number.

So when folks are concerned with this— I should say concerned or interested, you know, especially if you're a current oil and gas investor— there's the— I want to talk about both of these. There's the short-term impact of what this means maybe on expectation, but then there's also this long-term impact of what if we can bring some of this oil production online over the next several years. Is that— would that be accurate to say kind of what folks are, uh, right, top of mind?

Well, so, and what you've seen is the oil production companies and oil servicing companies, you've seen a big spike in the stock prices, but you haven't seen the price of the oil commodity move. And, and that's, that's accurate, right? The markets are reacting fundamentally right. So, so the idea is that these oil companies are going to be able to go into Venezuela and make money through the rebuilding of infrastructure, etc. But it's not a big impact on the oil market at this time, right? So, so assuming that all that production comes back, you know, again, Venezuela was a 3 million barrel per day producer at its peak. Assuming that comes back, you know, that's not— that's 3% of global oil demand. So it's not a giant number. Um, and, uh, the reality is that it's going to take a decade or more to bring that production back. So, so we've seen production decline from about 3 million barrels per day to less than 1 million barrels per day today through mismanagement, corruption, incompetence. And, you know, the infrastructure has just become dilapidated. The wells have not been maintained. And what happens is when you don't maintain an oil well, a lot of times you need to actually re-drill it. So it's not a simple, simple, hey, let's just turn on the spigot again. It doesn't work like that. You know, just for context, when, when the, you know, the Soviet Union collapsed, you know, their oil production dropped dramatically and it took the better part of 20 years to get their production back after that. So it's not easy. It's— it takes a huge amount of, of effort. I mean, you think about, you know, you know, hundreds and thousands of workers being allocated and piping and, you know, cranes and drills and just infrastructure everywhere needs to be replaced and redone. And it's just, it's not a fast thing. So it's not going to change anything in the immediate future.

Okay. And I'm going to get into the infrastructure questions here in a minute. But I mean, just in terms of, and again, I don't know what they're— I don't know if anyone knows at the moment, but You don't think with whatever their current barrels that they have underground could have, you know, at least in the short term, impact on prices, or you don't think that's an issue?

It's not going to have— no, barrels in the— barrels in the ground don't impact prices at all. It's only— it's only production. And so— and the production is not going to change. What is going to change is, is, you know, all of a sudden, instead of using the shadow fleet for its oil, they're entering the— you know, assuming that they, you know, they stay stabilize the country, uh, the, the sanctions will be lifted and they'll enter the global oil market. And, uh, and so, so, you know, you know, I don't think people necessarily realize that what's happened is, is this, you know, there's been emergence in the last few decades of what's called the shadow fleet. And this is a group of about 1,000 aging tankers, oil tankers, that operate in the gray zone. You know, illegally servicing these oil producers. They started with Iranian oil. Um, you know, Iran is about a 3 to 4 million barrel per day producer, and when they've been sanctioned for, for the last few decades, uh, the shadow fleet basically started servicing them. And this is— these are, these are smaller tankers that, that sail under, you know, false flags. They have the ownership is hidden, and, uh, and they basically skirt international law to basically buy oil at discounts and sell and bring it over to the people who are willing to buy oil on the cheap, mostly China and India. Well, that started in Iran. And then what happened is when Russia invaded Ukraine, they got sanctioned and the shadow fleet really went big time. And so a lot of vessels entered this very lucrative trade to trade gray market oil or black market oil. Let's call it black market oil. And then, and the shadow fleet has been operating pretty much without, uh, without, without resistance. So no one has been trying to stop these vessels or, or, or hinder them from doing this, even though it's, it's illegal what they're doing, until Venezuela. And so what happened is when, uh, when Trump did the military action, the first thing he did to put pressure on Venezuela is start intercepting these tankers and start putting, uh, you know, You know, all of a sudden, if you're a shadow fleet tanker, you're going, oh my God, am I going to get boarded? And am I going to lose all this oil that I just bought? And am I going to be, you know, insurable anymore, etc.? So they're wondering if they're going to make any money. And so what's happened is we're, you know, we're seeing one, these tankers are probably not going to be needed in Venezuela. But the bigger implication is there's indications now, I think the Europeans and the Americans are going to start policing the shadow fleet. And so what's, what's happening is because of, because of the Americans policing the shadow fleet in, in Venezuela, it's kind of shined a spotlight on the fact that we should be policing the shadow fleet. And now the world is going to be policing the shadow fleet. And so it's possible that to put pressure on Russia, which is a 10 million barrel per day producer, they're going to start intercepting the Shadow Fleet. And I believe that we're going to see this happening. And it's been— it's, you know what, there was another incident that happened. The Scandinavian country, I can't remember which one, it was Finland or Sweden, I believe, intercepted a Shadow Fleet tanker and found a bunch of Russian military on board. And so clearly, Russia is using the Shadow Fleet as kind of a a shadow navy. And so that's going to put more and more interest on inspecting these shadow fleet tankers, shutting them down, etc. So I believe we might see actually instead of a glut of oil, we might see Russian oil actually disappearing from the market because the shadow fleet is being shut down. So I think there's implications, kind of secondary implications for the world oil market.

Well, let's dive into this a little bit more because this is really interesting, because I think the initial fear of a lot of people reading these headlines was, oh wow, all these reserves, Venezuela, you know, we're taking control and it's going to flood the market with all the supply. But obviously we're talking about there's a difference between production and reserves in the ground. But what you're saying is the secondary implications is the, you know, gray market, black market of oil trading might start to be under more scrutiny and put more pressure on these countries that are selling in the black market. And that would be a much more significant impact to price.

Oh, yeah. Because, yeah, you're talking about 15 million barrels per day of production between Iran and, and Russia, you know, 13 to 14 million. And that is significant. And you want to put pressure, you know, does, does the Trump administration want to put pressure on Iran and on, on, on Russia? Absolutely. How about Europe? Do they want to put pressure on, on Russia? Heck yes. And so they could see this, you know, see the, you know, a huge amount of just, you know, policing of the shadow fleet and stopping of these tankers, boarding these tankers and inspecting their, their documents and their cargo.

So that basically forced the purchasers of the black market oil from the shadow fleet like China and India to have to buy it from other sources that are not sanctioned. Right. So, so then it puts, you know, less supply in the market, more demand.

Exactly. Well, the same amount of demand, but it means the supply, the Russian and Iranian supply would be taken off the market and that would put a huge amount of pressure on those regimes. You know, and clearly this, this administration has an appetite for regime, regime change and regime pressure. And these, you know, specifically Russia and Iran, I, I can imagine would be— should be terrified right now.

Can I— because I'm not the Shadow Fleet expert, I think it's a very cool name but don't know much about them. I do— I am curious, not that— not that this is all about the Shadow Fleet, but the name, you know, warrants a couple extra questions. One is, who would police this? Like, when you say police the country, who's policing these ships that would onboard them? I mean, like, when you say the police are going to show up on their ships, is that a country? Is that the US? Who is that? And then my second question would be, well, if that really happens, would— and you say these, these barrels of oil production would kind of be taken off the market— wouldn't they just— why can't they come back to the normal market?

They will. They will come back to the normal market. But so demand doesn't change, supply changes, right? So they would come back.

Well, they mean the demand, not the supply.

The right—

if they're sanctioned, they can't sell on the—

exactly. So they basically have a problem. And, and it's actually a long-term problem, too. So assuming Russia gets their shadow fleet shut down, then, you know, they're— if they have to start turning off their oil wells, well, you actually damage the oil infrastructure by doing that. And it could be, you know, that 10 million barrels per day doesn't come back. Without redrilling and again fixing the infrastructure. And to your earlier question of who's going to police, well, that's a big question. I mean, right now you just saw, you know, the tankers were boarded in the Baltic by, by, I believe, Sweden, certainly, certainly the United States. I mean, we just, you know, blockaded Venezuela. Are they going to— are they going to put folks over on the Persian Gulf and do the same for Iranian oil? Etc. I don't know. But certainly Russian, Russian oil, I definitely think they're gonna— we're gonna be seeing that happening.

So to go back to one of Trump's earlier quotes, he says we're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest— I wish I had a good Trump accent— the biggest anywhere in the world go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, and start making money for the country. I want to talk about that because, Bob, you've alluded to this. I mean, how realistic is U.S. access You know, like, how realistic is that? And why may that be a greater struggle than what he's quoted?

Well, I think that's real. So what's going to happen is, you know, assuming the billions of dollars get spent— and that is a question, okay? Are these guys, you know, in a post-fossil fuels narrative, which is what is currently the world is kind of operating under, this idea that we don't need any more exploration production? Are companies going to be willing to invest? Assuming they are, the first thing that's going to happen is the big US oil companies are going to start making a lot of money by rebuilding this infrastructure. And then the second thing that's going to happen is, assuming that Maduro and these, these, you know, kind of, you know, clowns that have been stealing everything are out of the picture, that the nation will benefit. So we'll see oil, oil revenues going to rebuild the nation and help the people. You know, raise the wealth of the nation. It— but it also is going to take the better part of 10 to 20 years to do this. I've seen estimates is, you know, around 16 years to rebuild the infrastructure. So it's not an overnight deal, it's a very, very long game. Um, and the first, the first beneficiaries are going to be the guys that are building the infrastructure. The secondary— second beneficiaries are going to be hopefully the people of Venezuela.

Well, I, I think it's important to, to not dismiss the substantial political risks that these companies would be taking to go and do that, right? Because I've read a couple articles, and you probably know more of the details than I do, but I believe it was, uh, Exxon— they, their, their assets got seized, right, 20-plus years ago, and, and they lost about an estimate of $10 billion of, of assets that the country just took over, right? So they've definitely got a—

because Venezuela nationalized everything, right? That was the pivotal moment when they nationalized their oil supply, and then they, you know, they've pretty much— anybody that was in there producing outside Venezuela, and they lost everything.

Yeah. And so Trump's obviously pro-regime change, but what happens when the next president comes in and all of a sudden that policy shifts massively and you know, and then history repeats itself.

Yeah, I just—

I hear what you're saying. I also just think that that's— it feels like it's a pretty big, uh, risk for these companies to take after what's happened.

Yeah, for sure. All these companies know— they may be looking to Trump and saying, okay, are you going to guarantee any of that money, you know? Are you going to pay for it? Um, and hopefully not. I mean, Trump is a businessman and generally doesn't do things like that. He doesn't think about giveaways. So So I would imagine he's going to put the risk all on them, the oil companies. And yeah, if you and I are sitting on the board of these oil companies, we're going to be looking very hard and saying, are we going to— how are we going to mitigate our risk and make sure we don't lose another $10 billion on this? And, and so, so yeah, that's a huge question, you know, and we don't know, right, what's going to happen. Is this going to be a— is this going to become a stabilized country? You know, I mean, after, you know, the US invaded Japan in 1945, you know, and it became an ally and became a stable nation. I mean, that's a, you know, we've seen, you know, a positive outcome like that. We've seen negative outcomes, you know, when US invaded Iraq, you know, you know, I, you know, I don't know if you would call that a stabilized nation right now. So, so we don't know what's going to happen. And, uh, you know, so there's just too many questions. I mean, you know, and this, this really goes to some of the deeper issues on— and as an oil investor, you know, the commodity is very— you know, there's geo— there's a lot of geopolitical risks that a lot of the, a lot of the oil reserves are in geopolitical hotspots. And it's one of the risks you take as an oil investor. You really do not know what is going to happen, which is, which is why as an oil investor you never want You never want to leverage, you know, on those things, and you do not want to, uh, you know, put everything in this one, this one game called oil, the oil investment. You know, it's, it's a, it's a great money-making business, it's a great place to be invested, but, but it is extremely volatile because of all these things.

I want to talk about the, like, what Venezuela produces. I'm trying to understand, like, who be— like, how we benefit as the US and as US investors, my understanding is there are 3 types of, you know, crude oil. You have light, medium, and heavy. And I, you know, to think about that, it's, it's kind of the density of the product, right? And Venezuela produces the heavy stuff. And that's pretty rare in my, in my reading and understanding of this, which is interesting that the US refineries are really set up for that type of oil. So let me just ask a question with that context. We want this to happen, right? I mean, this feels like if that's the case, this would be a net benefit to the economy of the United States.

Well, I think sure. I mean, it would, you know, yeah, the U.S. refiners are, are ready to process this. And we've got about 1 million barrels per day of refining capacity that we could take for heavy, heavy crude in the Gulf. So I think they're ready for that. And just and by the way, You know, even, even if, even if they could get production back, it's going to be very difficult to get that crude refined because, as you said, this is heavy sour crude and sour means it's very heavy in, in caustic chemicals like sulfur. And so not every refinery can handle this. You need very specialized infrastructure and very expensive upgrades and very few countries can do it. So again, getting the— getting it out of the ground is going to take, you know, 10 to 20 years and so is building refineries. To, to grow it. So again, it's not a big, a big impact short term. Long term, it just means that maybe some of this big supply, these big reserves, are going to be available to the world. And so I think it's generally a positive thing. I just don't think it has a lot of impact. I think the other things are going to have more impact, like the shadow fleet. And then I think we haven't mentioned is the fact that Ukraine has been targeting Russian oil infrastructure. Massively. They've been putting drones on trucks and, and shipping them thousands of miles away and targeting, uh, you know, terminals, oil production facilities. And they are, they're trying to take Russia offline as an oil producer, and it's working. Um, so these are much bigger, actually impactful things in the global oil market that are, that are more bullish for the oil prices.

Yeah, that's really interesting. So I want to ask you guys, from an investment standpoint, you know, we were talking about this earlier, this maybe has had more volatility in terms of pricing on the oil companies, not necessarily the pricing of the natural resources. Where might opportunities exist for oil investors in 2026? Are you following or looking at anything, uh, at, you know, as it pertains to opportunities for individual investors like ourselves and like investors of this podcast?

I don't think anything's changed. I mean, I think that as we've said, that it's a generational buying opportunity for oil and gas assets that have been massively underinvested in oil, in exploration development for the last 7, 8 years. And, and the prices of oil producing oil assets is very, very low. And so it represents a fantastic opportunity to get in on the cheap when, when, um, I believe we're going to see an oil shortage, you know, in the next few decades. So it's a good— it's just a perfect opportunity to get in. That's our thesis, and that's unchanged.

Yeah, I'll kind of add to that. I think, um, going back to one of the first questions is, what, what does this mean for investors right now? And as Bob has just said, it's— there's not a whole lot of impact that we're seeing, you know. In fact, actually, when The markets opened on Monday after Maduro's capture. Crude and futures, the prices, commodity prices both went up. It's the opposite of what everyone was anticipating because of these things. In the short term, we're likely going to see more depressed prices. Right now, we're trading in the mid-50s to low 60s. It's really because the current supply is is very high. We're actually at a slight surplus if, if, uh, you know, just meeting demand. But our long-term thesis, which we've said over and over again on the podcast, is there has not been enough investment into new development, um, that really sets the stage for future supply. And there's natural decline curves and depletion that happens every year of all these oil wells and reserves. And so what we We really believe and still very firmly believe that over the next 10+ years, there is going to be a pretty substantial gap between the demand that's needed for fossil fuels and the supply. I'd be curious, Bob, to me, the one thing that could change that thesis would be if Venezuela is able to tap into all these reserves and all of a sudden, they do become a 10 million barrel per day oil producer with endless reserves, maybe that does change the supply picture 10 years from now. But to get to that point, it just seems like there's so many hurdles and so many big, big question marks that have yet to be answered before you can even confidently have any guesstimate of that happening.

And then, and, you know, we've all seen the chart, right, of oil investment, oil exploration and development dollars spent worldwide, globally. And that number has been going down and down and down, less than $1 trillion a year right now when it was—

Say that again, Bob. What's the number that's going down?

The dollars being spent on exploration and development of oil, for oil exploration development. And that there's a price to pay for that if we do not explore. And we do not develop, you're seeing a 5 to 7% annual decline in production of existing oil assets, and it needs to be replaced. And those replacement dollars are not being spent. And so, so you're, you're assuming that someone's going to come in and all of a sudden reverse that trend in Venezuela. Well, we'll see. Well, we'll see what happens. Let's keep watching those numbers. And if suddenly someone is— who is suddenly excited about the oil market and gets go drill baby drill and spend baby spend for oil production. Right now, there's the narrative still is the world is post-fossil fuels. The EIA is still pushing the narratives that we are post-fossil fuels. We do not need any more exploration and development. And, and so we'll see what dollars are being spent. So, so, and, you know, if that does happen, if we're going to see all of a sudden a return to massive global spending on on oil infrastructure, then, you know, our, then our thesis would have to change.

Well, yeah, you could play to the side of that too. If all of a sudden the, the narrative changes to where, yeah, we do got to go spend and increase our investment exploration, well, we have a ton of reserves in the U.S. as well. So why, why would a U.S.-based oil producer decide to go and do all that spending in Venezuela when they— there's a lot to do in the U.S.?

That's absolutely right. And, and it's, it's least desirable because because it is heavy crude, right? So you got to be able to refine this. And there's very little refining capacity for this heavy crude. So that would have to be changed. So there's a, there's an additional barrier for Venezuelan crude that other crude doesn't have.

So what's clear is that we have our first headline for 2026 around oil and gas investing. As, as we wrap up, what lessons from Venezuela and what has just recently happened are shaping Aspen's investment strategy today and for the year ahead? And really, what can investors learn from this as we look, you know, essentially as we participate in oil and gas investments throughout the year?

You know, you know, there's a, there's a reason that there's a lot of money being made in oil and gas. And it is, it is a, it is a risky space because it is globally very unpredictable. Right. The geopolitical landscape is very unpredictable. And we're seeing this. What's going to happen to Iran? What's going to happen to Russia? No one knows. And there's a massive amount of supply that could go online or come offline at any minute. And so, you know, so you never really know what the price of oil is going to bear, which is why our thesis is not based on that. It's based on one, globally, there has not been enough investment over the last, you know, 7 to 8 years. To replace existing production. Number, number one. Number, number two, oil demand is not going down. Um, we're not seeing that going down anytime soon. And number three, oil assets are the cheapest they, they've been in, in decades. Um, and so you can, you can play this market, but don't bank on— don't, don't try and tell me what oil prices are going to be, right? We do believe that because of the lack of investment, there is going to be upward trend in prices once the current glut is, is burned off. So that, that's our thesis, and to me it stands.

I'll add to that. I think it kind of plays into how we make all our investment decisions at Aspen, which, as Bob's saying, are long-term investment theses, right? It's— we're not relying upon the headlines to dictate the, the moves that we make that can change, you know, week over week. And we've identified a very long-term thesis that Bob Fraser just described, and we're obviously always taking in new information and weighing it against that thesis. But that's the beautiful thing about investing with a long-term mindset, is you don't have to worry about the short-term ups and downs, right? Because it's— it hasn't changed the long-term thesis. And in this case, it's exactly what's happened, right? There's been some short-term volatility and likely to be more, as Bob Fraser has mentioned, but the long-term picture is still pretty clear. And we like, we like what that picture looks like. And so I think it's a helpful way to just take a step back and reframe the investment decisions that you make and make sure they are long-term focused so you don't have to stress about these, these kind of things.

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