By Bruno Sgarzini – Sep 15, 2026
One of Donald Trump’s fantasies is that he will be able to replenish the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR), decimated by the war against Iran, with oil from Venezuela that he has stolen after the January 3 invasion.
To gage the scale of the collapse of the reserves, the Trump administration has released so much oil from its inventories that their level has fallen to 286 million barrels, 40% of its estimated capacity of 700 million barrels. The decline predates Trump, as during Joe Biden’s administration, due to the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, the reserves had already fallen from 638 million to 395 million barrels in an attempt to contain oil prices in the United States.
This has left reserves at their lowest level since 1982, when they were just beginning to be filled during the times of Ronald Reagan. The current level of reserves is equivalent to 14 days of crude oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, estimated at around 20 million barrels per day before the start of the war and the US and Iranian blockades.
The issue is highly sensitive because the Trump administration is gradually losing more and more maneuvering room to isolate the most severe effects of the war against Iran from US wallets at gas stations across the country, which also coincides with the electoral period of the midterm elections, scheduled for November 3.
According to Carlos Mendoza Potellá, economist and former advisor to the Central Bank of Venezuela, it is clear that the future target for the acquired oil will be the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserves. “The refineries that receive Venezuelan oil from the Gulf Coast of Mexico are already receiving it in South Texas, Louisiana, and other states,” he said. “These refineries were set up in the 1940s specifically to process crude oils with an API gravity of 15 to 25 degrees [this is a measure that determines if the crude is heavy; the higher the number, the heavier the crude], and if you name that crude, it is Venezuelan crude.”
One of the problems in turning Trump’s wish into reality is that any attempt to add this oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserves must receive Congressional approval. After November 3, if the Republican Party loses the election, the White House’s decision could come to nothing if it does not have the Democrats’ approval.
Another major issue is the maturation of investments by North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) in the 17 oil fields granted by the agreement signed between Venezuela and the United States. Currently, NABEP produces about 200,000 barrels per day in its Petrozamora company, and some estimates, such as those of Venezuelan former high-level oil officer Einstein Millán Arcia, suggest that its new projects could increase the company’s production within a timeframe of 18 to 24 months.
According to NABEP’s plans, revealed by The Wall Street Journal, the company would install only six drilling rigs in the designated fields by the end of 2026 and would only incorporate 12 more platforms in 2027 to increase the number of barrels it extracts. These numbers are far from the 52 drills that NABEP plans to deploy across all its fields. The timelines seem quite distant from Trump’s urgency to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserves.
Later, if the White House decides to include heavy and extra-heavy crude as strategic reserves, there are other technical problems. “There is a physical-chemical incompatibility because when you mix different crudes—a heavy crude from the [Orinoco] Belt with a light or medium crude, like the one in the Strategic Petroleum Reserves—there can be incompatibility, as it generates deposits of asphaltenes, paraffin, wax, and others, which would destroy the quality of the whole,” commented Einstein Millán Arcia.
“One is a sweet crude, the other is sour,” he continued. “If Venezuelan oil were to be allocated 100% to the SPR—which is not going to be the case—they would have to upgrade it, deeply changing its quality, because, even upgraded, the acidity of this crude falls within a range of 1.5% to 2%, still high to be compatible with what is already in those reserves.”
The other possibility is that NABEP’s projects focus on recovering long-standing wells in western Venezuela, with over 100 years of history, that produce the light crude necessary for the SPR.
In the opinion of Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners, one alternative for the US would be to sell Venezuelan heavy crude to buy with those funds lighter crude suitable for the reserve, but he clarifies that this operation would take years. Other experts, such as Ellen Wald, agree with Millán Arcia that if this is not done, the only alternative is to refine Venezuelan heavy and extra-heavy oil until it has the necessary quality to be included in the SPR.
In 2016, the United States Department of Energy published a report stating that the costs outweigh the benefits when it comes to storing heavy oil like the Venezuelan one, as it would present considerable “operational difficulties.”
This is why the US secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, suggested in an interview that the United States’ plan would be for Venezuelan crude to enter the markets and be exchanged “for a barrel of light or medium United States crude.” Increased production from Venezuela, he said, “doesn’t mean that exactly these barrels go in there [the SPR].” The plan could take several years until Venezuelan production increases significantly.
That would be far from Trump’s immediate timelines.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/CD
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