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Key takeaways:
Oil is dominating the conversation in the US-backed efforts in Venezuela, with talk of oil majors dusting off old project plans, production targets and export routes.
Venezuela’s hydrocarbons remain among the largest proven reserves in the world, and years of underinvestment have left output a shadow of its former self.
But as the US moves to shape Venezuela’s future, focusing only on oil misses a much bigger strategic prize.
Venezuela is not just an oil country with minerals; it is a mineral country that has never fully integrated mining into its economic identity. That matters in a world where metals, not barrels, increasingly sit at the center of industrial policy.
Beneath the Orinoco belt and the Guayana Shield lies an impressive mix of bauxite, iron ore, gold, nickel and rare earth elements. Some are well mapped but underdeveloped, while others remain geologically promising but commercially untouched. All sit in a country that has for many years been off-limits to large-scale Western mining investment.
The temptation for the current US administration would be to prioritize oil first and everything else later. Oil offers speed, scale and familiarity. It also delivers political optics: barrels flowing again signal ‘success.’
Critical minerals do not. They require time, permitting, infrastructure and environmental and community frameworks. But they also offer something oil increasingly does not: alignment with industrial policy.
Washington has spent the past several years warning about dependence on Chinese-dominated supply chains for critical minerals. Rare earths, aluminium, nickel and battery metals have moved from obscure policy papers into the core of US industrial strategy.
The Inflation Reduction Act, the move to develop a strategic reserve and the push for ‘friend-shored’ supply, all point in the same direction.
The US is already moving to secure critical minerals in other parts of the world, from Ukraine’s titanium and rare earth deposits to cobalt and copper in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Venezuela could become a similarly strategic node in a hemispheric supply chain, offering geographically closer, Western-aligned sources of key metals.
If the US were to influence Venezuela’s economic reconstruction, it would be inconsistent to ignore one of the most mineral-rich jurisdictions in the western hemisphere.
Unlike some frontier jurisdictions, Venezuela is not starting from zero. It already produces — or at least has produced — at industrial scale. The country has long mined bauxite and once ran a sizeable aluminium value chain, from alumina refining to metal smelting, supported by hydroelectric power in the Guayana region.
State-owned smelters such as Alcasa and Venalum are now largely idle, casualties of power shortages, underinvestment, and sanctions, but the industrial footprint remains.
Japanese industrial groups, alongside Western majors such as Alcoa and Glencore, and former participants including Pechiney, Reynolds and Alusuisse, have all been involved in Venezuela at various times — through minority equity stakes, offtake and marketing arrangements, or technology and project cooperation.
Venezuela also produces iron ore, feeds domestic steelmaking and has commercial gold output alongside known nickel deposits and rare-earth potential that has attracted intermittent interest over the years.
This matters because it changes the nature of any rebuild. Restarting aluminium smelting or iron ore production is not a greenfield project; it is a question of capital, reliable power, and effective governance. In commodities terms, it is challenging — but entirely feasible.
The irony is that Venezuela’s mining sector is already deeply geopolitical — just not in a way that suits Western capitals. Informal mining, opaque state control and partnerships with non-Western actors have filled the vacuum left by sanctions and capital flight. Any reset would involve not just investment, but a wholesale rethink of governance, licensing and environmental oversight.
That is where the difficulty lies.
Oil can be restarted with capital and technical know-how, but mining takes time and does not deliver quick political wins. It requires licensing systems, environmental enforcement, community consent and functioning courts — the institutional scaffolding that is often weakest after political upheaval.
Mining also tends to face stringent environmental, social and governance (ESG) scrutiny, with standards closely tied to investment and market access.
Still, the strategic logic is hard to ignore.
From the current administration’s perspective, Venezuela sits geographically close to US manufacturing, has access to Atlantic shipping routes and holds minerals that feature prominently in Washington’s own risk assessments. Ignoring that endowment while pouring capital into oil would look less like pragmatism and more like habit.
A Venezuela that also develops its mineral base — transparently and competitively — could become something far more relevant to the next phase of global commodity markets. In a world driven as much by policy as by price, what is built — or rebuilt — can be far more consequential than what is pumped.
In Hotter Commodities, special correspondent Andrea Hotter covers some of the biggest stories impacting the natural resources sector. Read more coverage on our dedicated Hotter Commodities page here.