World's biggest oil reserves at stake: Is Maduro's fall good or bad for American oil?

Bill Ackman, the American investor and CEO of Pershing Square, on Saturday weighed in on the implications of Venezuela's leadership change, linking it directly to global oil prices and geopolitical outcomes.

"The removal of Maduro will lower oil prices, which is good for America and very bad for Russia," he wrote on X. "A weaker Russian economy will increase the probability that the war in Ukraine ends sooner and on more favorable terms for Ukraine. And Putin will be sleeping in his safe room from this point going forward."

The comments came hours after a dramatic US operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

The development, followed by statements from Washington about direct involvement in Venezuela's oil sector, immediately rattled global energy markets and triggered competing assessments of what lower oil prices would actually mean for the United States.

Reacting to Ackman's view, American biochemist Chris Martenson warned that cheaper oil could inflict damage at home. "No, that would harm the US oil industry, which is the source of all prosperity. Shale basins are already struggling at these prices. Further declines will damage them. This is unequivocally BAD for American prosperity," Martenson said.

WTI (West Texas Intermediate), the key benchmark for US shale, is currently trading around 57–61 dollars a barrel, after a slide through late 2025 and into early January 2026. But most new shale drilling only becomes clearly profitable at significantly higher levels. Recent industry and analyst estimates put the average breakeven for fresh U.S. shale wells at about 70 dollars WTI, with many producers indicating they need prices above roughly 65 dollars to justify new activity.

Venezuela is home to the world's largest proven crude oil reserves, estimated at about 303 billion barrels. At current prices of roughly $57 per barrel, those reserves are valued at approximately $17.3 trillion. Even if sold at half the prevailing market rate, they would still be worth nearly $8.7 trillion — a figure larger than the entire GDP of every country in the world except the United States and China.

Following the capture of Maduro, US President Donald Trump declared that Washington would be "very strongly involved" in Venezuela's oil industry, signalling a decisive shift in US policy toward the country's energy assets.

'We're in the oil business’

Speaking at a news conference on December 3, Trump said American oil majors would enter Venezuela, invest billions of dollars to repair what he described as the country’s "badly broken" oil infrastructure, and restart production at scale. "We're going to have our very large US oil companies - the biggest anywhere in the world - go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country," Trump said. "We’re in the oil business. We’re going to sell it to them."

According to Trump, US oil companies would shoulder the upfront costs of rebuilding Venezuela’s oil facilities, with revenues from future oil sales used to reimburse American expenditures. “The money coming out of the ground is very substantial,” he said. “We’re going to get reimbursed for everything that we spend.”