저자: 미상 · 외국인
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미국의 베네수엘라 정권 교체 이후 베네수엘라 석유 인프라는 손상되지 않았고, 매장량(약 3천억~1조 배럴)을 감안하면 장기적으로 유가 하락과 디플레이션 요인이 된다고 주장. 단기 재정 해결이나 즉각적 경기침체 해소는 어렵고, 생산 회복에는 10~15년이 걸릴 것으로 봄. 장기적으로 현금 대신 주식(S&P/나스닥)과 부동산 보유를 권장하며, 리스크로 권력 공백과 중·러 개입을 꼽음.
다듬은 글
was that it's all about oil and wealth. US oil assets and the oil assets in general in Venezuela were untouched. The oil infrastructure and start making money. The United States just overthrew an illegitimate dictator in Venezuela. And it's raised a lot of questions such as now that we got our hands on their oil, what are we going to do with it and how rich is it going to make America?
After all, some folks are circulating estimates that because there are over 300 billion barrels of oil essentially waiting to be extracted under the tar sands of Venezuela, we could extract that, sell it, and pay off our national deficit. And while we're at it, just eliminate income taxes because we just got a gold mine of oil wealth.
That's one argument that we're hearing. And then another argument that we're hearing is, huh, interesting. invaded a country under the pretense of one issue like drugs to get your hands on their energy. That sounds a whole lot like let's invade Ukraine to denazify it while at the same time taking control of 90% of Ukraine's energy infrastructure or reserves which just happened to be at the eastern flank.
Yeah, that's the Russian flank, which just happens to be exactly the land that Putin wants as a buffer and won't end the war until he gets to annex all of it. He already got the ports, now he just wants the resources. Then other people have this other concern that we're really just inviting dictators around the world or forgive me the Chinese Communist Party's leaders.
We're just inviting them to snatch leaders that they don't like such as the leaders in Taiwan and institute regime change to install people that would be friendly to a one China policy in Taiwan. Did Donald Trump just basically pull off a Putin and invite China to do exactly the same thing? Or are we just all going to get oil rich?
Well, in this video, we're going to break down the complexities of what's next and what all this oil wealth actually means. Because after all, we all know it always has something to do with money. Now look, we know Venezuela has a lot of oil reserves. About $34 billion worth of oil reserves. That's paper oil that's technically underground waiting to be extracted.
But the biggest of all, and this is according to various different sources, the biggest of all is Venezuela. That represents about 1/5if of the world's oil reserves, more precisely about 18%. And much of this is located in the Renoo Belt where you have a heavy and viscous blend. More on that in just a moment in terms of the type of oil.
But let's go take a look at the map. Because when I thought about where this oil actually sits in Venezuela, I couldn't help myself but immediately ask, huh, this 500 kilome square kilometer uh Orinco oil belt in red right here obviously has to get transported out of the country somehow to be sold. And we've been capturing and seizing oil tankers.
And we did just strike an oil port in Karacus. And so the question is, where are the major oil ports? Did we accidentally damage any oil infrastructure in Venezuela? Well, it turns out the answer to that is no. What a surprise. We happened to surgically, well, maybe not because they're kind of far away, but we basically didn't even touch the oil infrastructure.
See, we struck over here in Karacus. One of our major oil export ports is over here at Porter Jose, which is about 10 kilometers to the west of Barcelona. And if you scroll over to a different Google Maps view over here, you'll see that if you go further west of Karacus, you'll end up over at Porto Miranda, which is the major oil export port.
Neither of these were damaged. In fact, according to Reuters, absolutely zero oil infrastructure was damaged during this attack. Venezuela's state-run oil production and refining were operating normally on Saturday and suffered no damage from a US strike to extract the country's president. Now, why does this matter?
Because we might want that oil infrastructure. Donald Trump has made that exceptionally clear. We also know that Venezuela has the most oil in the ground. More than Saudi Arabia, more than Iran, more than Iraq, Canada, the UAE, Kuwait, Russia, Venezuela happens to have the most oil in the world. And so this is quite fascinating because if they've got the most oil reserves, what's it going to take to get our hands on it?
Well, to understand this, we have to understand a little bit of geology. Not too much because it could get a little dense. So, when you're drilling for oil, you want the easiest freaking oil you could possibly get. Venezuela's oil ain't the easiest oil to get. In fact, it's probably the worst oil to get your hands on.
Oil production is very expensive. tar sands production, which is what Venezuela operates with. That's what they have, is the most expensive. So, the Middle East oil that we're able to extract by sticking a straw on the ground and it comes squirting out, okay, maybe not that extreme. That is the least difficult and most profitable oil to extract.
deep water oil drilling have well these sites have massive upfront cost you know like the horizon wells but they tend to produce pretty big dividends over the long term fracking dries up pretty fast though it's exploding in the United States we're kind of doing it everywhere but the wells just don't last that long the tar sands do last long but they're probably the most expensive and lowest profit margin form of oil to extract and so the reason I bring up this chart right here is just to give you an understanding that when we're able to put together these sort of scans, if you will, of what these oil wells and the sands and the shale actually look like, we're guessing.
We don't actually know. A lot of these are oil simulations and we kind of have to look for the oil as we're going by t turning and tuning our drill bits. Now, the goal here and in this chart right here, you could see these little lines. These are all drilled wells over here that we've drilled. The goal is to only hit yellow.
That's the spongy sandy stuff where over time in the deeper rock formations, oil has actually been heated up or steamed up through natural processes and seeped up into this sort of spongy sand. So, think about it like a rock bed where all that oil is cooking and brewing, you know, deeper in the earth and a nice sponge on top of it.
That sponge is full of really delicious heavy oil. Now, the reason why I bring up heavy oil is because that's what most of Venezuela is. And there's an interesting connection to heavy oil in Venezuela and what we have in the United States. See, in the United States, we happen to have a lot of heavy oil refineries in Texas.
These refineries are primarily set up for heavy oil for taking that gloopy stuff and turning it into gasoline and all of the other different products. And lately, we've been relying on heavy oil imports from Canada. But now look at what's happened since. Right now, Canada has gone from 15% of all of the US imports of oil to 61%.
Right now, about 70% of the oil we import is a heavy blend. Most of that comes from Canada. But if we could unlock Venezuela, we could keep our refineries cooking and we can actually get Venezuela's oil production up and running again. See, the problem is, as Donald Trump put it himself, their infrastructure sucks.
Trump himself said, it's mostly 25 years old, and it's a lot of the old stuff that we actually invested into the country. Chevron is one of the few remaining Americans that had operated up until these recent seizures in Venezuela. At peak, Venezuela did about 3 million barrels per day. And based on the reserves that they have, that means it would take about 276 years to extract all of that oil.
The problem is today they're extracting less than 1 million barrels per oil a day. That means we're looking at closer to a,000 years to extract all of this oil wealth. So, no, we're not going to flick a switch and all of a sudden pay off our national debt. This is a little bit disappointing to think about, but there's good news.
See, these estimates, these reserve estimates that there are about 300 billion barrels of oil buried under the ground. These are based on extraction rates of about 15 to 25%. What would actually be deemed profitable to extract and the rest you'll just leave it there. But with today's US and Canadian technology, we could actually probably extract twice of what Venez Venezuela is actually able to extract themselves.
Which means Venezuela's oil reserves with US and Canadian technology are probably twice as big and over time might actually be over a trillion barrels of oil. US Geological Survey estimates that Venezuela has more than 1 trillion barrels of oil in place in the Orinoco belt. To put it in perspective, the world until today has consumed about 1.5 trillion.
This means over the next decade to decades, we could actually 10x the current oil production or more that takes place in Venezuela and still end up having over 160 years of oil. Which means we're really knocking on the door of the 23rd century. That's crazy to think about because it basically means if Jerome Powell is starting to print money and Donald Trump is printing oil, all of the bullish estimates we have for the future of uh the American economy in global markets might end up looking really bearish.
In other words, this is quite bullish catalyst. Yeah, quite a bullish catalyst. But let's be clear, this catalyst is going to take a little bit of time because again, this is some of the most expensive oil to extract. And this brings up the next problem when it comes to oil production and paying off debt and profits.
See, when we produce oil, the US government doesn't produce it. Companies do. Companies and investors invest in oil wells. They make profits after selling the oil and they pay taxes. So realistically, the government's only going to get the benefit of taxes or maybe some co-investment that the government potentially makes, which Donald Trump has set a precedent for by co-investing in companies like MP Materials or Intel.
So that's possible, but the government certainly isn't going to get 100% of that revenue. And there are obviously also costs to actually operate the wells, the research to find exactly where to drill, and then of course the refining process, not to mention the shipping costs. So really, what we're looking at is not paying off the national debt.
We're actually looking at something that's also desirable, though maybe not as juicy as not paying income taxes anymore. We're talking about more oil in the global economy. And more oil is a double-edged sword. See, if you actually have more oil, then you lower the price of oil. And what ends up happening is you make investors less interested in extracting that more expensive oil to extract in Venezuela in the first place.
See, oil prices recently spiked a little bit. Not much. They've been on a massive downtrend, but they spiked a little bit recently because of these oil tanker seizures that we've been seeing and this buildup of military equipment in the Caribbean. The largest that we've seen since the Cuban missile crisis.
Yeah, that's like 50 years ago. problem is for oil prices. Now that the crisis is essentially over for now, we still have regime problems to worry about, but because the crisis is essentially over for now, we actually expect oil prices to fall, which again then lowers the ROI of actually investing in oil extraction in the first place.
So to take a Twitter post that's, you know, takes 30 seconds to read and go, "Oh my gosh, this is great. We hit the gold mine. We're going to pay off all our national debt." Way too simplistic. This is a multi-dead deflation play. See, by lowering the cost of energy, we lower the cost of gasoline, heating, kerosene for flights, consumer products such as plastics, petrol, uh, ethanes.
All of these things lower the costs of production in America, which allows companies more wealth, allowing company employees to hopefully make more money or people to have to spend less money on things like gas or heating or goods. And they're able to spend more money on higher margin expenses, both businesses and people like services.
For the business side, research and innovation. This is generally a big win for GDP. The less money we spend burning it to keep ourselves warm or to get from point A to point B, the more money we have to do other things like start businesses. Now remember, natural gas is also a byproduct of oil production.
And this is where we get Jensen Huang on you. You ready for this? Natural gas is really great for data centers because data centers are basically piping in pipelines of natural gas and building their own on-site natural gas plants so they can generate the energy that they need to run Jensen's Blackwell and Reuben chips or whatever chips you're running.
Problem is Venezuela right now doesn't have the infrastructure to actually capture the natural gas they're flaring. When you drill for oil, gas comes up. Kind of like when you pop a soda can after you shake it, all this gas comes out. Venezuela is like, "We don't have the technology to capture this.
What are we going to do with all this natural gas going in the air? This is unsafe." Well, how about we just light it on fire? So that's what we do. We light it on fire in Venezuela and it just burns away. The amount of flaring that we do in Venezuela could literally power Colombia, like the entire country of 53 million people, at least in terms of their natural gas usage.
It's crazy. Uh, but anyway, Venezuela is burning a lot of this natural gas. And so, if we can actually use American and Canadian technology to capture it and we don't burn it, we could actually lower the cost of natural gas as well. Again, you can't lower the price too much because then people don't actually care and they just light it on fire again.
So, it's this weird delicate balance because that's how capitalism works. Just it's not profitable to do anything with it. You light it on fire. That's a downside. We don't like that. Especially all that crap going into the environment probably not great, right? But over time, increasing the efficiency of infrastructure in Venezuela is actually a massive deflation play.
It's a massive deflation play because the cost of everything can be tied to the cost of energy and oil and plastics. And so if we're about to face a massive deflation play over the next decades, we're probably going to resume the great moderation, which is inflation going down over the long term. Okay.
So, who wins in that sort of scenario? Well, look, I want to be clear. All this takes a lot of time. So, it doesn't mean we stop a recession right now. It just means we have decades now of downward pressure on energy, assuming we don't actually have some kind of imperialist like China or Russia takeover of Venezuela.
That's going to be a risk factor. Maybe more on that in just a moment. But for now, think about the implications of a deflationary lifetime. So in other words, the next 50 years, right? If you're 20 today, maybe the next 80 years, you know, knock on wood, right? So, think about the next 50 to 80 years as a deflationary play in part because of the seeds we're planting in Venezuela today.
As interest rates over time come down because costs of everything come down, we actually reduce input costs and inflation. Yeah, we'll see more money printing because we try to prevent deflation. I know that sounds ironic. Illergic to deflation. It's seen as depressionary, like you don't want to go through a great depression to just have lower prices because you'll lose your job and you'll not be able to pay for anything anyway.
So, the Fed will print money to keep inflation at, you know, 2%. Uh, yeah, it's magic money printing and it's all a giant policy. We know that. So, how do you practically protect yourself? Well, I mean, there are a few strategies. Number one, you get your money out of cash, right? you get your money out of cash and you get into corporate ownership.
Uh so shares of companies when you own part of Train America, even if it's just an S&P fund or the NASDAQ or whatever, these companies collectively have fewer expenses in a deflationary future. So they are likely to have greater earnings. Top of that, interest rates are likely to come down, which is great for housing, which is also an asset that gets you out of the dollar.
So stocks and real estate, especially in places people want to live, especially America, probably good long-term ways to make a long-term lifetime massive deflationary play. It's kind of exciting. So not short-term, long-term, but keep in mind, we don't have the best historical reputation for actually affecting regime change.
Well, see, Libya is a great example. after Gaddafi was overthrown by well with the help of NATO in 2011 we had a very fragmented military and government in Libya and the risk here is you end up getting substantially lower energy production and you don't have a functional government problem with this is if you look at Libya their oil production today is about onethird of what it was when Gaddafi was in power so their energy production actually plummeted so a fragmented government would just do the opposite of everything that I'm talking about right now.
Not good. Another obviously big issue would be some imperialist getting propped up by China and Russia. And no, I'm not talking about like Russia sending over some random Vladimir or Dimmitri to go take over. They don't have to do that. They already have a Vladimir in place. Yeah, quite literally. The National Armed Forces of Venezuela are led by General Vladimir Patrino Lopez.
He don't really like the West that much. Neither does uh this other guy. Well, let's just call him Cabo. Some people will say Cababo Cabo. Some people say Cabello. I don't know. But anyway, this guy also doesn't like the West that much. Problem with this is if people like this who have power either running the armed forces of the entire country or leading the interior services like spies and special forces.
These are very powerful people and if they get propped up by Russia andor China or both of them together, the United States isn't going to get a drop of oil. Russia and China might be uh looking to pick up some of that oil. So all of that benefit could go towards them. Now Trump threatens a second wave.
But this is where we are a little bit in a quagmire before we start getting excited about all this oil wealth. We got to realize, yes, we overthrew an illegitimate dictator. Okay? The public election showed two times as many votes as the illegitimate dictator got went to the opposition. Yet they didn't care.
They ignored the results of the election. seized and m well maintain power of the military and maintain control of Venezuela. So that's how you get an illegitimate president aka a dictator. So what do we find from another example? Okay, like timewise, you know, cuz that would be a bad example, right?
But what's another example? Iraq. Let's go to Iraq. If we go to Iraq post Saddam Hussein, so operation Iraqi freedom, we go to like 2001 23. We look in that era, we can see that oil production actually plummeted uh from before of about 2.2 million barrels of oil per day. Uh we saw a plummet all the way down to less than half of that.
And then look how long it took to recover back to the production levels of where they were. took until 2011, which means it took 7 to 10 years, depending on where you really measure from, to actually get oil production just back to where it was. To actually see meaningful growth, probably took another 3 to four years after that.
So, in other words, it could take 10 to 15 years to actually really see this deflation. That's why I say I think it's too soon to cheer. Yay, recessions canled. Like shortterm, this doesn't do anything other than create uncertainty about, okay, so who's going to run Venezuela now? What are China and Russia going to do?
Now, some people say that this has everything to do with propping up the value of the dollar or ddollarization. So, we have to break this apart a little bit. So, historically, Donald Trump wants a weak dollar. He doesn't want to prop up the dollar. The reason he wants a weak dollar is to incentivize US production because it makes it cheaper for countries to buy our stuff.
It makes us more competitive now on ddollarization. So I don't think he's trying to prop up the dollar. But he might want to preserve the use of the dollar which is different from the value of the dollar. Right? Okay. This is fair. So bricks or Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, they all want to move away from the dollar.
They've been talking about this forever. Yeah, it's true. Saddam Hussein wanted to sell oil in euros and he was overthrown. Although it's not clear that he actually ever ended up settling any oil trades in euros. Gaddafi wanted a goldbacked currency to challenge the US dollar and he was also overthrown, but it's not clear that they ever actually even had enough gold to pull this off.
Maduro wanted to sell oil in yuan, Chinese currency, Ren Minbby, and he was just removed. Now, all these people had ideas about doing this, but it's unclear then there's no evidence that Maduro actually ever did sell oil to the Chinese in Yuan. And as of a few years ago, we were still settling over 80% of all the oil trade in the world in US dollars.
Saudi Arabia has also talked about settling oil in yuan with China, but Trump has recently really cozied up to them with the AI trade. And let's just say it doesn't seem like a very near-term risk. So dd dollararization might be kind of like preventing that might be sort of a like little bonus, but I don't think that was the real motivator here.
Oil oil infrastructure big money motivator. drug trade probably the legal argument and justification you use kind of like how there were weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East but we don't need to go there and so the biggest risk now is a power vacuum that somebody either like Russia or China or even just a local liberation army like oh I don't know how about the Colombian Marxist National Liberation Army and they're gorillas who were allied with Maduro end up coming in to seize power.
That would be bad. So, fragmentation and leadership are the greatest risks right now. The idea that we're going to suddenly pay off our national debt rapidly by turning all of this into cash tomorrow without tanking the oil market. It's a it's a cool tweet, but it's far-fetched. This is about decades of deflation.
This really has nothing to do with the very near term. This will take years, but for the rest of your life, Venezuela might be not just pumping oil, but pumping deflation. Why not .
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