Oil prices initially fell by more than 1% at the start of trading in Asia on Monday before recovering some of their losses, following the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a U.S. military operation the previous day.
After the operation, Washington said it intended to exploit the Latin American country’s vast crude oil reserves.
At around 08:00 Japan time (01:00 GMT), U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was trading at about $56.60 a barrel, while North Sea Brent stood at $60.00. By 08:20 (01:20 GMT), WTI was down 0.60% at $56.98 a barrel, and Brent had fallen 0.49% to $60.45.
Following aerial bombardments and the capture of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores by U.S. armed forces, U.S. President Donald Trump said the day before yesterday that he would allow U.S. oil companies to exploit Venezuela’s resources.
He added that Washington “will govern” the country until there is a “safe, orderly, and just transition.”
Venezuela holds some of the world’s largest crude oil reserves—more than 303 billion barrels, or about 17–20% of the global total—according to OPEC, of which it is a member. This exceeds the reserves of Saudi Arabia (267 billion barrels) and Iran.
However, oil production was already particularly low before the U.S. intervention, at around 1 million barrels per day, compared with 3.5 million barrels per day when Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, took power in 1999.
With the global oil market already considered adequately supplied, analysts say any potential disruptions to Venezuela’s production—about 1% of global supply—are expected to have a limited impact.
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