Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt is an Environmental Nightmare

April 22 (oilprice.com) U.S. intervention in Venezuela, with illegitimate President Nicolas Maduro snatched in a daring January 2026 night raid, opened the country’s oil industry to foreign investment. While President Donald Trump is aggressively pushing for Big Oil to invest in Venezuela, energy majors are taking a more sober approach. Venezuela’s heavily corroded oil infrastructure, responsible for a nationwide environmental catastrophe, will require tens of billions of dollars to remediate before production will rise significantly. This, along with an ecological crisis precipitated by chronic spills and leaks, is heavily impacting investor sentiment.

While Lake Maracaibo, South America’s largest water body, is enduring the worst of the environmental devastation unleashed by Venezuela’s oil industry, the Orinoco Belt is facing a similar catastrophe. The oil-rich area spans a vast 21,000 square mile (34,000 square kilometer) arc that stretches across central and eastern Venezuela.

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Source: United States Geological Survey (USGS).

The Orinoco Belt has an estimated 1.3 trillion barrels of oil in place, which is predominantly situated in the Miocene Oficina Formation. The USGS estimates there are between 380 and 652 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil in the petroleum-rich region, making the Orinoco Belt the world’s largest heavy oil resource. Indeed, the hydrocarbon-rich area for decades was responsible for 50 to 70% of Venezuela’s oil production.

As a result, the Orinoco Belt will be the key driver of Venezuela’s petroleum-led recovery. In fact, production in the region has grown at an impressive rate since Washington’s early January 2026 intervention. Sources from Venezuela’s national oil company PDVSA, quoted in a Reuters article, claim February 2026 production from the Orinoco Belt reached just over 500,000 barrels per day, a 100,000-barrel increase over early January 2026. It is impressive production growth that is driving Venezuela’s growing oil output.

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