Keep Pushin’ – Venezuela’s Crude Oil Terminals Need Minor Fixes, Major Overhauls to Boost Exports

A lot of work must be done to revive Venezuela’s crude oil industry, which has suffered from years of poor management and underinvestment. One of the biggest priorities is to improve and expand its export capacity, which will require repairs and upgrades to export terminals while also fixing problems around unreliable power supply and tanker congestion. Exports have rebounded sharply in early 2026 after collapsing late last year, but much more could happen. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll outline the additional steps that could be completed to improve Venezuela’s facilities and boost export volumes.

Venezuela has been a frequent topic in the RBN blogosphere since the start of the year, when U.S. forces deposed and arrested President Nicolás Maduro. In Take Me Money and Run Venezuela, we recapped how the country went from a major global supplier to producing less than 1 MMb/d today — roughly one-quarter of its former output. We then dug into Venezuela’s crude slate in Orinoco Flow, noting that most reserves lie in the 21,000-square-mile Orinoco Belt and are extra-heavy, making the oil difficult and costly to move and refine. In When Love Comes to Town, we compared Venezuelan and Canadian heavy crudes and why they’re attractive to U.S. Gulf Coast refiners. In Round and Round (which previewed our first Drill Down Report of 2026, which is available here), we laid out the practical steps Venezuela would need to take to boost crude production. Most recently, The Show Goes On detailed the country’s refining sector, Upgrade U examined the important role the country’s crude upgraders figure to play in any plan to boost domestic production and increase exports, while Don’t You (Forget About Me) looked at the country’s expansive natural gas reserves. 

Most Venezuelan crude oil production is low-API, high-sulfur crude, coming from the previously noted Orinoco Belt. Because the crude is so dense and viscous, it needs to be blended with a diluent — typically condensate or natural gasoline — or upgraded to a lighter synthetic crude oil (SCO) before it can be transported easily, similar to crude produced in the Canadian oil sands. Exports of crude and refined products have rebounded sharply this year after collapsing late last year. Shipments bottomed out near 100 Mb/d in early January (see Figure 1 below) following a steep December decline, then recovered to roughly 500–550 Mb/d by late January. After holding relatively flat through February, exports climbed to around 1.1 MMb/d in March — the highest level in about six months — before briefly spiking to around 1.4 MMb/d in early April.