The Show Goes On – Plans for Venezuelan Revival Might Not Include its Long-Neglected Refining Sector

The U.S. and Israeli military strikes against Iran and the unsettled situation in the Middle East have pushed many topics to the background for now. But the energy-related impacts from the U.S.’s decision to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power early this year is one topic that won’t stay in the shadows for long. Venezuela, estimated to have the world’s largest crude oil reserves, was also a major refiner that exported products across the Western Hemisphere before it began a decadelong downturn. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the history of Venezuela’s refining sector, where things stand today, and the prospects for a turnaround.

We have written extensively about the developments in Venezuela over the past several weeks, with our analysis so far focused on crude oil production and other upstream issues. In Take Me Money and Run Venezuela, we began by detailing how the country was once a critical supplier of heavy sour crude to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, providing more than 1 MMb/d in the late 1990s and early 2000s before Venezuelan production entered a long period of decline soon after Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, came into power in late 1999. Today, the country produces less than 1 MMb/d of crude oil — barely one-quarter of the level it reached in the late 1990s.

After our initial blog, we looked more closely at the type of crude Venezuela produces and the potential impact of more barrels hitting the global market. In Orinoco Flow, we said that most of Venezuela’s crude oil reserves are located within the 21,000-square-mile Orinoco Belt, which produces a crude that is extra-heavy (an API as low as 8-14 degrees), so thick that it’s difficult to transport and refine. In When Love Comes to Town, we looked at the differences in Venezuelan and Canadian heavy crudes, including production methods, costs and quality, and how a revival in Venezuelan production could impact the flows and prices of Canadian barrels. (As noted in our weekly Crude Billboard report, the U.S. imported 423 Mb/d of Venezuelan crude in the week ended March 13, the highest since December 2024.) We capped that series with Round and Round, where we detailed the concrete steps Venezuela could take to boost crude production in the short, medium and long term. (That analysis was included in our first Drill Down Report of 2026, which is available here.)

Today’s blog begins a new series on Venezuela, this one focused on its refining sector, export capabilities and turnaround potential. Just as we did in our initial series, let’s start with some background. 

Venezuela built up the largest refining industry in Latin America during the post-WW2 era and retained that position until Brazil (a country with four times as much fuel demand) passed it in 1980, but it remained a major regional product exporter in the Caribbean (including exports to the U.S.) until well into the Chávez years. Venezuela is home to five refineries — including the Paraguaná Refining Complex, what was once the largest single-site refining facility in the world and remains the second largest by rated capacity — all of which have operated far below their full capacity in recent years. 

Back in the sector’s heyday, before Chávez came to power, Venezuelan refinery throughput (see Figure 1 below) was consistently around 1 MMb/d. With its refineries operating at high rates, Venezuela emerged as a major source of refined products, with the U.S. and other Western Hemisphere countries becoming consistent importers of Venezuelan gasoline, middle distillates and other products (particularly fuel oil and asphalt). The performance of Venezuela’s refineries showed a noticeable dip in 2002 and 2003, around the time of a major strike against state-run PDVSA, but throughput mostly held steady until the early 2010s, when a sharp decline began.