In the hours after the United States removed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power, the idea of the nation's vast oil reserves and its potential for new production sparked a conversation about new foreign investment. And while President Donald Trump indicated U.S. energy companies were eager to rebuild the infrastructure, it won't happen overnight.
Ramanan Krishnamoorti is the Vice President for Energy and Innovation at the University of Houston. He says short-term, the new market might produce some local jobs and down the road it could be a boon for Gulf Coast refineries, but uncertainty might slow actual investment in oil production by Houston-based energy companies.
"It's very much contingent on what happens next," he told ABC13. "This is at a time when these companies are pretty strapped for cash because you've got falling oil prices. In the last year or so, it's dropped twenty dollars per barrel, and that's really starting to eat up on their profits. "
It could take billions of dollars to reinvigorate Venezuela's production. Nobody is really certain of the condition of the assets there since former President Hugo Chavez effectively kicked out foreign companies twenty years ago.
"Under these conditions, these companies were left holding the bag, initially having invested all this money and not get any return on that investment," Krishnamoorti said.
Theodore Borrego is an attorney whose done business in Venezuela and has helped businesses navigate the energy sector there. He echoes Krishnamoorti's assessment that energy companies will be slow to move on the opportunity because of the huge investment and the even bigger potential risk.
"It's going to have a minimal impact here in Texas, here in Houston, at least for a long time," he said. "It makes no sense for an international company to invest in Venezuela. Not now. And the reason I say that is the political situation in Venezuela is volatile at best."
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, as of October, Venezuela provided just 1.5% of U.S. oil imports at about 135,000 barrels per day. That's not enough to move markets, but there could be potential for increased production under the right political and economic conditions down the road. For Houston-based energy companies and service providers, however, it won't be immediate.
Skip York is a non-resident fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. He thinks there is a Houston sector that could grow in the next few years. The key is the political climate long-term, not weeks or months.
"I think in the near term, not much because there are so many things that have to get resolved," York said. "In the longer term, maybe five plus years, I think the impact you would see in Houston would be the refiners. There would be a growing source of heavy crude oil, which is what their main diet is for those Gulf Coast refineries."
There remain two major questions as it relates to American prospects in Venezuelan oil and gas, according to industry experts: one is the state of the infrastructure and the cost of modernizing it, and the other is the sustained political climate, whatever that may look like.
For updates on this story, follow Tom Abrahams on Facebook, X and Instagram.