Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
PaperclipPerfector
17d ago
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Transnational Thursday for December 18, 2025
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I'm curious about Mottizens' opinions about the US administration's motivations for the regime change push in Venezuala.
I think its multi-factoral. Monroe doctrine cleansing of Iran's influence (shadow fleet, drone technology sharing) as well as potentially stopping sharing of a cleaner less high-sulphur based crude oil to China which is easier to process for US's rival.
Reclamation of oil industry nationalised assets doesn't quite sit right as Grok says in 1976 they got paid 'fair market value' and there was varied compensation in 2006 (although they straight up seized assets from Exxon-Mobil).
I believe Fentanyl/cocaine has practically nothing to do with it despite the administration's claims.
Thoughts?
I spent a decade in the oil and gas industry and I've always found Republicans' attitudes towards energy policy rather curious. On the one hand, they have a "drill baby drill!" mentality, and they express support for American energy companies. On the other hand, they talk about lowering prices for consumers. These are contradictory positions. When I was working in oil and gas, like most people, my livelihood was tied to how much my company could sell its product for, and the more we could sell it for, the more I got paid. The headiest times in my career were when oil was well over $100/bbl in the summer of 2014 and everyone was making money hand over fist. Of course, gas was $5/gallon adjusted for inflation, and conservatives were blaming Obama for hamstringing the energy industry. By February 2016, the price of oil had crashed, and there were mass layoffs, my office was down to a skeleton crew, and these were obviously also Obama's fault because he was hamstringing the industry. But gas was down to $2.50/gallon.
In other words, they expect good energy policy to mean constant drilling, even though constant drilling just isn't profitable. If oil is cheap they aren't going to spend billions of dollars on well starts. Most of the work I was doing in 2015/2016 was asset assignments from companies looking to unload their holdings to large investors, or smaller operators getting bough out by big companies like Consol and EQT. There was a modest rebound in 2017, which some people attributed to Trump, but the crash at the end of 2019 was worse than anything under Obama because it was clear that it wasn't turning around any time soon. We could muddle through 2016 with a skeleton crew, but 2019 spelled the end of my firm's oil and gas division. The Trump years have been pretty meh overall from an industry perspective, so the idea that Republicans are somehow good for the oil and gas industry is hogwash, since we had bigger highs and shallower lows under both Obama and Biden.
So when he talks about taking Venezuelan oil, I'm not sure how this is supposed to benefit either the oil and gas industry or the American consumer. Oil is currently trading around $55/bbl. Rig counts are dropping and are down about 30% from their Biden-era highs. Producers aren't drilling the oil they already have access to; giving them more isn't going to do much, especially when that oil is expensive to access and in a war zone. It's no surprise then that when Trump reached out to industry leaders earlier this week, reps from companies like Exxon and ConocoPhillips said point blank that they had no interest in resurrecting the Venezuelan oil industry with prices at five year lows. It's almost as if he doesn't understand how the laws of supply and demand work. If he were really concerned with how much American consumers are paying at the pump—which isn't much, historically—he'd strike a deal with Maduro to flood the US market with Venezuelan oil and use whatever money he had planned on spending on the war and use it to subsidize the US oil companies outright. This is a terrible policy for a number of reasons, but it's still better than the idiocy we have now.
Venezuelan oil isn’t for today, it’s for fifty years from now. The Ghawar and North Sea oil fields are drying up rapidly. Pretty soon the two major sources of oil on the planet are going to be Venezuela and Siberia. Sure Venezuelan oil is heavy sour crude, but when that’s all you can get it will taste like mana from heaven. When you are a state, you have to think on longer time frames than the individual. Fifty years from now might as well be next Thursday.
Do you think that oil will really matter that much in 50 years? Solar is outcompeting all other forms of electricity production and electric cars are replacing petrol ones. Oil is useful as a manufacturing material I guess, but in 50 years the global population will be in freefall thanks to low birthrates and the carbon transition will be completed. Surely there will be plenty of oil to go around?
Airplanes? Ships? Semi-trucks? Electric cars are only good for suburban commuters. Everyone else needs a power source that can last over long distances and doesn't take ten hours to recharge.
As for solar, battery storage capacity lags far behind power generation capacity. Which is a problem, because it means solar is unreliable. It doesn't matter if on average solar can produce all the power you need; a couple of cloudy days in a row will screw you over.
Not there yet, but in fifty years, I'd wager so. They're already in development.
For cargo shipping, there are already electric versions. Of course, cargo shipping doesn't really consume that much fuel relative to how much stuff they transport. Again, in fifty years we can reasonably expect technology to have improved.
These already exist.
Solar and batteries are now cheap enough (and getting cheaper!) that grid-level storage is possible. We don't need any new technological innovations, just to scale today's technology at today's prices, which is exactly what's happening. Combine some overbuilding with solar panels (easy now that they are dirt cheap) along with some wind turbines and you've got yourself constant power, since wind and sunshine are anticorrelated. Not that oil even matters for electricity generation, almost all fossil fuels used to power grids are coal and gas, which are now significantly more expensive than solar panels and wind turbines.
Worrying about oil in 50 years is like worrying about shortages of natural rubber now. Technology has superceded old requirements. The future is now.
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