IEA Raises Forecast of Global Oil Demand Growth in 2026

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jan 21, 2026

The world’s oil demand growth is set to rise by 930,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2026, thanks to lower oil prices and a normalization of economies after the 2025 tariff chaos, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday, raising its demand growth estimate by 70,000 bpd from last month. 

Oil demand is forecast to grow by an average 930,000 bpd this year, accelerating from 850,000 bpd in 2025, the agency said in its closely-watched Oil Market Report for January. 

In the December report, the IEA had expected global oil demand growth at 860,000 bpd for 2026. 

The upgrade reflects a recovery in feedstock demand in the petrochemicals industry, on top of expectations of normalized economic conditions after the unpredictable and chaotic tariff policy of the Trump Administration last year. 

The tariff threats haven’t gone away, but global trade and economies appear to have overcome the initial shock. 

Despite lower output from Kazakhstan and a number of Middle Eastern OPEC producers in recent weeks, global oil supply is now projected to rise by 2.5 million bpd this year to 108.7 million bpd, following a jump of 3 million bpd in 2025, according to the IEA. 

Yet, the implied surplus on the global oil market would be lower compared to last month’s estimate. In December, the IEA expected an implied surplus of 3.84 million bpd, while in the January report the implied glut is 3.69 million bpd, mostly due to the increase in the IEA’s demand growth forecast. 

Inventories are rising, in both crude and products, and weigh on global oil prices, despite brief spikes driven by geopolitical developments in Venezuela and Iran, the Paris-based agency noted. 

“Indeed, benchmark crude oil prices remain $16/bbl lower than a year ago, reflecting the large global supply surplus that built up over the past 12 months, in line with our forecasts,” the IEA said. 

Observed global oil stocks rose by 1.3 million bpd on average in 2025, visible in the surge in oil on water, higher Chinese crude stocks, and a rise in U.S. gas liquids inventories, the agency noted. 

“For now, bloated balances provide some comfort to market participants and have kept prices in check,” the IEA said.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com 

USGS Uncovers Massive New Oil and Gas Potential in the Permian Basin

By Andrew Topf - Jan 20, 2026

• USGS estimates 28.3 Tcf of gas and 1.6 billion barrels of oil are technically recoverable in the deep Woodford and Barnett shales, challenging claims that U.S. shale resources are nearing exhaustion.
• 
  
• Commercial viability remains uncertain, as the formations are deeper, hotter, more gas-prone, and technically complex.
• 
  
• The discovery comes amid weak shale conditions, with low oil prices, falling rig counts, and rapid well decline rates forcing producers to drill aggressively just to maintain output.
• 
  

A new discovery in the Permian Basin is challenging the narrative that shale oil and gas in the United States is declining.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has released its assessment of undiscovered gas and oil in the Woodford and Barnett shales in the Permian Basin, assessing that there are technically recoverable resources of 28.3 trillion cubic feet of gas — enough to supply the United States for 10 months at the current rate of consumption — and 1.6 billion barrels of oil, or 10 weeks’ supply.

If that doesn’t sound like much, consider that since the 1990s, the Woodford and Barnett shales have only produced 26 million barrels of oil, the equivalent of one day’s consumption. From the Jan. 14 USGS news release:

The Permian Basin has long been one of the most abundant sources of U.S. energy. The organic-rich shales of the Woodford and Barnett occur up to 20,000 feet below the surface, at greater depths than other resources in the Permian. Advances in unconventional production – hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling – now make it possible to produce energy resources from previously inaccessible and technically challenging formations, such as the Woodford and Barnett. 

However, there are challenges in recovering the oil and gas trapped in this particular shale rock. Toti Larson, principal investigator at the Bureau of Economic Geology's Mudrock Systems Research Laboratory at the University of Texas, which specializes in shale research, told the Houston Chronicle that the reserves are deeper than the formations where companies traditionally drill, and hotter, meaning they contain more associated gas. In the Barnett there is more clay, which poses drilling hazards.

“And then the other complexity is just really trying to identify the sort of sweet spots,” Larson said. “Where across the Permian Basin is the Woodford most likely going to produce oil? And so I think that’s what makes the Woodford still an exploration target.”

The discovery in the Permian Basin, which straddles West Texas and New Mexico, comes at a challenging time for US shale.

The United States is rushing to sell off millions of barrels of Venezuelan oil after the Trump administration ousted and detained leader Nicholas Maduro on Jan. 3.

The Department of Energy is organizing the sale of about 50 million barrels of oil that the United States seized from Venezuelan tankers.

Today’s oil market is already saturated, faced with a persistent global oil glut, and oil companies can’t afford for prices to dip much lower than their current levels of around $60 per barrel. Production is already projected to exceed demand in 2026, thanks in large part to OPEC’s reversal of production cuts over the last year, without even factoring in a Venezuelan oil renaissance. 

Against this backdrop and from where US shale producers are standing, a flood of cheap oil and gas onto the global market is a nightmare scenario. The number of operating rigs in Texas oil country is already down nearly 15% this year as producers anxiously wait for prices to climb back up. As a result, the economy is already slowing down across West Texas. “It has really cast a shadow over the Permian,” Ben Shepperd, president of the trade group Permian Basin Petroleum Association, recently told the Wall Street Journal.

Shale wells decline fast, forcing constant drilling—the “Red Queen” effect—with many losing 70–90% of output in three years.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says global fields are depleting faster than thought, so most spending now just fights decline.

Shale oil wells are gushers in their first year, then deplete rapidly. Shale companies, therefore, have to keep ploughing more money into production just to keep output flat, a phenomenon known as the “Red Queen Syndrome,” named after Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. Shale wells typically bleed off 70 to 90% in their first three years and drop by 20 to 40% a year without new drilling.

A recent IEA report confirms this, stating that the world’s oil and gas fields are declining at a faster rate than previously thought, leaving the energy sector facing a costly battle to maintain output.

In fact, since 2019 oil and gas groups have spent $500,000 on oil and gas production, nearly 90 percent of annual investment, simply to arrest the decline in existing fields.

“The situation means that the industry has to run much faster just to stand still,” IEA boss Faith Birol was quoted saying.

By Andrew Topf for Oilprice.com

Moscow revels in Trump’s Greenland plans but keeps concerns quiet


By AFP
January 20, 2026


President Donald Trump says owning Greenland is critical for US national security - Copyright AFP ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS

As President Donald Trump intensifies his push to secure control of Greenland for the United States, Russia is revelling in the chaos while keeping its own position on US ownership over the island unclear.

European countries have warned any US attempt to seize Greenland would rupture NATO, a transatlantic alliance that Russia has long seen as a security threat.

But Moscow has also expressed concern about the West expanding its military foothold in the Arctic, an area where it has its own ambitions and which it sees as strategically important.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not spoken publicly about the dispute this year, while his spokesperson and foreign minister have called the situation “unusual” and denied Moscow has any intentions to seize the Arctic territory itself.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Trump would “go down in history” if he took control of the island, while declining to comment on whether this was “good or bad”.

Trump says US ownership of Greenland is critical for his country’s national security.

He and his aides have argued Denmark, a fellow NATO member, would be unable to defend Greenland should Russia or China ever seek to invade the vast island, a Danish autonomous territory.

Greenland sits under the flight path between the United States and Russia, making it a potentially critical outpost for air defences.

Without commenting on Trump’s claim, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference on Tuesday: “Greenland is not a natural part of Denmark, it is a colonial conquest.”

He pointed to France’s control of Mayotte and Britain’s ownership of the Falkland Islands — which Lavrov referred to as the “Malvinas Islands”, as Argentina calls them — as examples of European powers retaining control of conquered territory.



– ‘Close eye on situation’ –



Peskov said last week Russia was “like the rest of the world, keeping a close eye on the situation.”

“We proceed from the premise that Greenland is a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark,” he added in remarks last Friday.

“The situation is unusual, I would even say extraordinary, from the point of view of international law,” Peskov said, adding that Trump “as he has said himself, is not somebody for whom international law is some kind of priority”.

Pro-Kremlin media outlets have meanwhile revelled in the dispute.

The Moskovskiy Komsomolets tabloid said on Sunday it was watching with joy at Europe falling into “complete disarray” over the crisis.

Although Moscow has not said whether it would oppose the United States taking control of the territory, it has repeatedly warned NATO against deploying troops and equipment to the Arctic region.

Last week, the Russian Embassy in Belgium — where NATO is headquartered — accused the alliance of embarking on an “accelerated militarisation of the North”.

Putin has not commented publicly on the issue since it reemerged as a focus for the Trump administration in recent weeks.

The Kremlin chief had in March 2025 said Trump had “serious plans regarding Greenland” that had “long-standing historical roots”, after the US President mooted the need for American control of the territory.

At the time, Putin said the issue “concerns two specific nations and has nothing to do with us”, but that Russia was “concerned” about what he called increasing NATO activity in the Arctic.

Hungary rejects joint EU stance on Greenland, foreign minister says

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto at a joint press conference with his Czech colleague, Petr Macinka in Prague / Facebook/Peter Szijjarto

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By bne IntelliNews January 20, 2026

Hungary does not consider the issue of Greenland to be a European Union matter and therefore does not support issuing a joint EU statement on the subject, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said on January 18 in Prague.

Speaking at a joint press conference with his Czech colleague, Petr Macinka, Szijjarto said Hungary views the matter as a bilateral issue to be resolved through negotiations between the parties concerned. He added that Hungary had already indicated this position at a meeting of EU permanent representatives.

EU ambassadors broadly agreed on January 18 to step up diplomatic efforts to prevent US President Donald Trump from imposing tariffs on European partners, while simultaneously laying the groundwork for countermeasures if the duties are introduced.

Trump said on January 17, he would roll out a series of escalating tariffs from February 1 targeting EU member states, including Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, as well as Britain and Norway, unless the United States is allowed to purchase Greenland.

Budapest has not commented on the possible impact of US sanctions, although such a move would be dire for the country’s export-oriented automotive industry.

Analysts said that Hungary’s veteran leader Orban, who has recently been invited to join the Gaza "Board of Peace", is unlikely to go against the US leader, even on critical issues such as Greenland.

Hungary’s veteran leader has also made it clear at the party’s congress earlier this month that Budapest does not want a common foreign policy and that sovereignty in foreign affairs is essential to nationhood.  

Hungary was the only EU member state not to support the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy’s statement on US intervention in Venezuela.

For years, Hungary has broken ranks with joint EU policy on Ukraine and Israel, so the decision came as little surprise.

In his speech at the party congress, Orban noted that Hungary’s future is in the EU and in Nato and advised against leaving the bloc, but added that it may not be necessary as the EU is gradually disintegrating and may fall apart.

Petr Macinka said the situation regarding Greenland was complex and could not be resolved by a single statement, adding that dialogue was necessary.

He said talks involving the United States, Greenland and Denmark could help resolve the issue, and warned against the formation of a unified European stance against the United States. Macinka also said the Czech Republic maintains good relations with Washington and would be willing to assist Denmark through mediation if needed

Hungarian and Czech governments share identical positions on critical issues, rejecting war, migration, and gender ideology, Szijjarto said in Prague. He signalled an attempt to rebuild a bloc of like-minded governments within the EU and pledged to revise the V4 group after years of fragmentation.

Dogsled diplomacy in Greenland proves elusive for US


By AFP
January 20, 2026


An Inuit hunter rides his dogsled on the soft sea ice as he looks for seal outside Ittoqqortoormiit, on the frozen Scoresbysund Fjord, on the east coast of Greenland - Copyright AFP Olivier MORIN

Pierre-Henry DESHAYES

Greenland’s biggest dogsled race is a cultural mainstay on the Arctic island, but US envoys keep finding themselves disinvited, frustrating attempts by President Donald Trump’s team to wield soft power in the Danish autonomous territory.

The annual Avannaata Qimussersua race is dear to Greenlanders as the most prestigious event of its kind, pitting around 30 teams against each other to decide the territory’s top dog sledders.

That has piqued the interest of team Trump as the American president pushes to take over Greenland.

In the space of a few days, Trump’s special envoy for Greenland, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, was first invited and then uninvited to this year’s race, to be held on March 28 in Qasigiannguit, a small community on the west coast.

Last year, after Trump revived his ambition to acquire Greenland, Usha Vance, wife of US Vice President JD Vance, had also planned to attend the race, before her appearance was cancelled.

“We’re looking at manoeuvres that, if not outright interference, are at least a form of soft diplomacy that involves meeting local populations with the intent of influencing them,” Mikaa Blugeon-Mered, a researcher on Arctic geopolitics, told AFP.

The would-be visits are part of a broader push by Washington to get a feel for the Greenlandic population — which at this point is overwhelmingly opposed to joining the United States — and encourage pro-American sentiment in order to win hearts and minds, according to the researcher.

In August, Danish public broadcaster DR reported that at least three Americans linked to Trump were conducting influence operations in Greenland.

Their mission was to identify those favouring closer ties to the United States, as well as those in fierce opposition, according to DR.

In May, the Wall Street Journal reported that US intelligence agencies had been ordered to gather information on Greenland’s independence movement and views on potential US exploitation of the island’s natural resources.



– Identity marker –



For many of Greenland’s 57,000 inhabitants, of whom nearly 90 percent are Inuit, the Avannaata Qimussersua is strongly tied to identity.

The race, generally held at the end of the winter season, is part of the island’s “living culture”, said Manumina Lund Jensen, an associate professor in the Department of Cultural and Social History at the University of Greenland.

“It’s very important for the Greenlanders, and it is a very emotional journey if you go there,” she told AFP.

Amid renewed tension between Washington and Europe, the Greenland Dog Sledding Association (KNQK) recently announced that the invitation to Landry — which had been extended without its knowledge by a private tour operator — had been cancelled.

“KNQK has been informed that the tourism company that invited Governor Jeff Landry from the United States has unilaterally withdrawn its invitation,” the organisation said in a statement.

“This is reassuring,” it added.



– ‘Political pressure’ –



Greenlandic broadcaster KNR reported last week that Landry had been invited by tour operator Kristian Jeremiassen.

Speaking to KNR, Jeremiassen said he had invited “many different people” to the race, without specifying whom, “to promote tourism in northern Greenland”.

However, the Greenland Dog Sledding Association said it found it “unacceptable that political pressure is being exerted from outside” and called the invitation “wholly inappropriate”.

According to Blugeon-Mered, alongside his work as a tour operator, Jeremiassen is a politician “on the wane… whose primary goal is to make himself a kind of go-between (with the United States) to boost his business”.

A year ago, Usha Vance had planned to attend the race without an official invitation.

“The US consulate had offered to fund most of the race,” Blugeon-Mered said.

“They thought that by being the race’s main sponsor, they could buy the organisers and do whatever they wanted. It didn’t work.”

JD Vance’s planned visit had sparked strong objections in Denmark, which saw it as “unacceptable pressure” and said it risked provoking demonstrations during the event.

The US delegation ultimately changed its programme, and JD and Usha Vance instead visited an American air base at Pituffik, in the territory’s northwest.

These familiar steps show how Trump is walking us into autocracy

The Conversation
January 18, 2026 2:01PM ET

By Konstantin Zhukov,

 Assistant Professor of Economics,

 Indiana University; Institute for Humane Studies.





The FBI search of a Washington Post reporter’s home on Jan. 14, 2026, was a rare and intimidating move by an administration focused on repressing criticism and dissent.

In his story about the search at Hannah Natanson’s home, at which FBI agents said they were searching for materials related to a federal government contractor, Post reporter Perry Stein wrote that “it is highly unusual and aggressive for law enforcement to conduct a search on a reporter’s home.”

And Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told the New York Times the raid was “intensely concerning,” and could have a chilling effect “on legitimate journalistic activity.”

Free speech and independent media play a vital role in holding governments accountable by informing the public about government wrongdoing.

This is precisely why autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin have worked to silence independent media, eliminating checks on their power and extending their rule. In Russia, for example, public ignorance about Putin’s responsibility for military failures in the war on Ukraine has allowed state propaganda to shift blame to senior military officials instead.

While the United States remains institutionally far removed from countries like Russia, the Trump administration has taken troubling early steps toward autocracy by threatening — and in some cases implementing — restrictions on free speech and independent media.
Public ignorance, free speech and independent media

Ignorance about what public officials do exists in every political system.

In democracies, citizens often remain uninformed because learning about politics takes time and effort, while one vote rarely changes an election. American economist Anthony Downs called this “rational ignorance,” and it is made worse by complex laws and bureaucracy that few people fully understand.

As a result, voters often lack the information needed to monitor politicians or hold them accountable, giving officials more room to act in their own interest.

Free speech and independent media are essential for breaking this cycle. They allow citizens, journalists and opposition leaders to expose corruption and criticize those in power.

Open debate helps people share grievances and organize collective action, from protests to campaigns.

Independent media also act as watchdogs, investigating wrongdoing and raising the political cost of abuse – making it harder for leaders to get away with corruption or incompetence.

Public ignorance in autocracies

Autocrats strengthen their grip on power by undermining the institutions meant to keep them in check.

When free speech and independent journalism disappear, citizens are less likely to learn about government corruption or failures. Ignorance becomes the regime’s ally — it keeps people isolated and uninformed. By censoring information, autocrats create an information vacuum that prevents citizens from making informed choices or organizing protests.

This lack of reliable information also allows autocrats to spread propaganda and shape public opinion on major political and social issues.

Most modern autocrats have worked to silence free speech and crush independent media. When Putin came to power, he gradually shut down independent TV networks and censored opposition outlets. Journalists who exposed government corruption or brutality were harassed, prosecuted or even killed. New laws restricted protests and public criticism, while “foreign agent” rules made it nearly impossible for the few remaining independent media to operate.

At the same time, the Kremlin built a vast propaganda machine to shape public opinion. This control over information helped protect the regime during crises. As I noted in a recent article, many Russians were unaware of Putin’s responsibility for military failures in 2022. State media used propaganda to shift blame to the military leadership — preserving Putin’s popularity even as the war faltered.

Threat to independent media in the US

While the United States remains far from an autocracy, the Trump administration has taken steps that echo the behavior of authoritarian regimes.

Consider the use of lawsuits to intimidate journalists. In Singapore, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, routinely used civil defamation suits to silence reporters who exposed government repression or corruption. These tactics discouraged criticism and encouraged self-censorship.

President Donald Trump has taken a similar approach, seeking US$15 billion from the New York Times for publication of several allegedly “malicious” articles, and $10 billion from the Wall Street Journal. The latter suit concerns a story about a letter Trump reportedly signed in Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book.

A court dismissed the lawsuit against the Times; that’s likely to happen with the Journal suit as well. But such lawsuits could deter reporting on government misconduct, reporting on the actions and statements of Trump’s political opponents, and the kind of criticism of an administration inherent in opinion journalism such as columns and editorials.

This problem is compounded by the fact that after ABC's Jimmy Kimmel was suspended following a threat from the Trump-aligned chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the president suggested revoking the broadcast licenses of networks that air negative commentary about him.

Although Kimmel was later reinstated, the episode revealed how the administration could use the autocratic technique of bureaucratic pressure to suppress speech it disagreed with. Combined with efforts to prosecute the president’s perceived enemies through the Justice Department, such actions inevitably encourage media self-censorship and deepen public ignorance.

Threat to free speech

Autocrats often invoke “national security” to pass laws restricting free speech. Russia’s “foreign agents” law, passed in 2012, forced nongovernmental organizations with foreign funding to label themselves as such, becoming a tool for silencing dissenting advocacy groups. Its 2022 revision broadened the definition, letting the Kremlin target anyone who criticized the government.

Similar laws have appeared in Hungary, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. Russia also uses vague “terrorist” and “extremist” designations to punish those who protest and dissent, all under the guise of “national security.”

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, the Trump administration took steps threatening free speech. It used the pretext of the “violence-inciting radical left” to call for a crackdown on what it designated as “hate speech,” threaten liberal groups, and designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.

The latter move is especially troubling, pushing the United States closer to the behavior characteristic of autocratic governments. The vagueness of the designation threatens to suppress free expression and opposition to the Trump administration.

Antifa is not an organization but a “decentralized collection of individual activists,” as scholar Stanislav Vysotsky describes it. The scope of those falling under the antifa label is widened by its identification with broad ideas, described in a national security memorandum issued by the Trump administration in the fall of 2025, like anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity. This gives the government leeway to prosecute an unprecedented number of individuals for their speech.

As scholar Melinda Haas writes, the memorandum “pushes the limits of presidential authority by targeting individuals and groups as potential domestic terrorists based on their beliefs rather than their actions.”

Is It about the Oil?

by Greg Godels / January 19th, 2026

“No War for Oil” is one of the most popular slogans in the many emergency demonstrations sprouting up around the world in response to the criminal kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores from their residence in Caracas, Venezuela and their forced removal to detention in the US.

For many outraged by the naked military aggression on Venezuelan sovereignty, the abduction is an escalated step toward the capture of Venezuelan energy resources by the US government, given that Venezuela has the largest proven petroleum reserves of any country at this moment.

The argument goes that– when you pull the curtain back– the ultimate goal of US imperialist designs is the control over and possible exploitation of Venezuela’s most important resource.

Having argued frequently that oil-imperialism or energy-imperialism is often an important– if not decisive– factor in capitalist foreign policy, this claim is appealing. Since the time when Britain in the early twentieth century turned from coal-burning naval ships to oil, petroleum has become more and more essential for the functioning, growth, and protection of capitalist economies. Consequently, intense competition for a rapidly diminishing, increasingly hard to discover, and growing-costly-to-exploit resource dictates the actions of great power rivals.

History gives us important examples of resource-scarcity spurring devastating imperialist aggression by capitalist powers. Nazi Germany’s Lebensraum program had at its core the necessity of acquiring energy resources to propel its imperialist designs– a program that led to world war. Similarly, Hirohito’s Japan– a resource-poor island nation– launched its Pacific offensive largely to acquire the oil to continue its war against China in the face of a US embargo.

The US embargo to deny oil to Republican Spain was, conversely, an aggressive act in oil imperialism, as is today’s blockade of Cuba. The war in Ukraine is indirectly a war over energy resources, since US resolve was stoked by the opportunity to win the vast EU market from Russia– a convenient, inexpensive, and formerly reliable supplier.

Less well known, the major oil and gas suppliers are constantly influencing global politics through manipulating production and prices. The most well-known example is the 1970’s OPEC oil strike against Israel’s Western supporters (an act that the Arab countries have lost the stomach for in recent times).

As a wise friend speculated once: “Why do you think the US never occupied Somalia after the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 left 92 US casualties? Because there was no oil!”

Yet many believe that the attack on Venezuelan sovereignty was not about the oil… even with the President of the aggressor state saying that it was!

Instead, they believe it was about Western values, the rule of law, democracy, petty grievances, hubris, or even drug smuggling. Those in the loyal opposition– Democratic Party leaders– share many of these same explanations, but fault the Trump administration for its procedural or legalistic errors.

The center-left, the bogus-left, and the anti-Communist left deny that oil could be the motive because they imagine that it might bolster the case for an explanation based upon classical Leninist imperialism– that the invasion of Venezuela was motivated by corporate interests, by exploitation of resource-rich countries.

Thus,  widely-followed liberal economist Paul Krugman scoffs at the idea that Venezuela was invaded for oil: “… whatever it is we’re doing in Venezuela isn’t really a war for oil. It is, instead, a war for oil fantasies. The vast wealth Trump imagines is waiting there to be taken doesn’t exist.”

Krugman collects and endorses the most popular arguments against the “war for oil” viewpoint:

1. Venezuela reserves are a lie.

2. Venezuela’s heavy crude oil is uneconomic, undesirable, and unwanted.

3. The Venezuelan industry is so decrepit that it is beyond rescue.

4. The US has so much sweet, light crude oil available at low cost that no one would want Venezuelan oil.

The Nobel prize award-winner’s dismissal could easily be dismissed by simply asking why– if acquiring Venezuelan oil is so pointless– did Chevron ship 1.68 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil in the first week of January, according to Bloomberg?

And then there is the ever-voracious, parasitic Haliburton– the consummate insider corporation– that announced that it’s ready to go into Venezuela within months!

It is worth looking a little deeper into the reasons that Venezuela’s oil is a possible target of imperialist design.

If Venezuela’s oil reserves are even one-third of what OPEC, The US Energy Information Administration, or The Energy Institute concede, their reserves would still be double those of the US.

While Venezuela’s heavy, sour crude is costlier to extract and refine, it remains as a legacy with many refineries in the US that were established before the shale boom. Naked Capitalism concedes that “[i]t is true that the US has motive, in that our refineries are tuned so that 70% of the oil they process is heavier grades, despite the US producing light sweet crudes.” It further quotes The American Fuel and Petroleum Manufacturer’s website:

Long before the U.S. shale boom, when global production of light sweet crude oil was declining, we made significant investments in our refineries to process heavier, high-sulfur crude oils that were more widely available in the global market. These investments were made to ensure U.S. refineries would have access to the feedstocks needed to produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Heavier crude is now an essential feedstock for many U.S. refineries. Substituting it for U.S. light sweet crude oil would make these facilities less efficient and competitive, leading to a decline in fuel production and higher costs for consumers.

Currently, Canada exports 90% of its very heavy, sour oil to the US, accounting for approximately a quarter of its total exports to the US. Oil from the Alberta oil sands is also expensive to extract and refine, but nonetheless amounts to 4 to 4.5 million barrels per day exported to the US. It must be acknowledged that future Venezuelan oil counts as powerful leverage in the recent and continuing political and economic friction between the US and Canada, especially as Canada is defying the US by building “a new strategic partnership” with China.

Much has been made of the state of the Venezuelan oil industry, today producing around a million barrels a day, down from its peak at over 3.5 million barrels per day decades ago. Indeed, the US blockade has stifled investments, shuttered export markets, and denied technological advances. Nonetheless, Venezuela has produced as much as 2 million barrels a day as recently as 2017. Admittedly, it would take significant investment to return to the 2017 level and vast investment to restore the level of the 1970s.

Many commentators are “shocked” by the enormous capital required to upgrade the Venezuelan oil industry. They forget earlier “shocking” assessments of the fracking revolution: “The U.S. shale oil industry hailed as a “revolution” has burned through a quarter trillion dollars more than it has brought in over the last decade. It has been a money-losing endeavor of epic proportions.”

Still, the Trump administration’s gambit has many competitors concerned that US control over Venezuela’s oil “would reshape the global oil map–putting the US in charge of the output of one of the founding members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and, along with America’s own prodigious production, give it a potentially disruptive role in a market already struggling with oversupply.” According to the Wall Street Journal, US oil production, US political and corporate domination of Guyana’s emerging energy sector, and now Venezuela’s reserves, may place the US in a position to unbalance the market, particularly at the expense of the OPEC alliance, a move of enormous political consequence.

The critics of oil-imperialism fail to understand all of its dimensions. They crudely simplify the politics of oil to the immediacy of extraction and its costs of the moment, ignoring indirect impacts, the wider prospects, and the longer term.

Nor do they grasp the issues that are facing the US domestic oil industry. While fracking has allowed the industry to return to being the largest crude oil producer in the world, the industry faces the perennial question of peak production for a given technology– the ever-present problem of rising costs of discovery and extraction. Further, the exalted Permian Basin is “becoming a pressure cooker”, pressing upon both costs and public acceptance. “Swaths of the Permian appear to be on the verge of geological malfunction. Pressure in the injection reservoirs in a prime portion of the basin runs as high as 0.7 pound per square inch per foot, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology.” As The Wall Street Journal also reports: “A buildup in pressure across the region is propelling wastewater up ancient wellbores, birthing geysers that can cost millions of dollars to clean up. Companies are wrestling with drilling hazards that make it costlier to operate and complaining that the marinade is creeping into their oil-and-gas reservoirs. Communities friendly to oil and gas are growing worried about injection.”

Because of the current glut of oil (likely retaliation by OPEC+ producers seeking to drive down US production below its cost of production and recover market share) the number of operating rigs is down 14% in the Permian. Oil markets are volatile, competitive, and transient. Where Venezuelan crude will fit into these equations remains an open question.

And then there is the Essequibo, a region currently within the borders of Guyana, but disputed by Venezuela. Recent discoveries in the area promise a potential of over 11 billion barrels of oil, with Exxon estimating a production of 1.7 million barrels per day by 2030. This economic plum is now off the table in the conflict between the Maduro government and Guyana and Exxon. As OILPRICE.com puts it succinctly: Trump’s Venezuela Takeover Will Make Guyana Oil Safer… for the US and Exxon.

Let us not forget China. The People’s Republic of China has granted around $106 billion in loans to Venezuela since 2000. Daniel Chavez, writing in TNI, notes that those loans place “it fourth among recipients of Chinese official credit globally.” Estimates vary, but the PRC imports between 400,000 and 600,000 barrels per day from Venezuela, at least doubling since 2020. While it is less than 5% of PRC usage, it is not inconsequential. And it represents a serious penetration of capital and trade in the Western hemisphere– the US sphere of interest.

It underscores the reality that oil-politics is not merely about the immediacy of reserves, extraction, costs, and price, but also about competition and rivalry within the imperialist system. The competition and conflict between the US, Venezuela, Guyana, Canada, PRC, OPEC, and other oil-producing countries is intrinsic to a system that lives and breathes thanks to its exploitation of energy resources. In that regard, it is still most clearly viewed through the prism of Lenin’s theory of advanced capitalism devised over a hundred years ago.

I give the last word to the informed and serious student of the oil industry, Antonia Juhasz:

If the greatest lie the devil ever told was to convince us that he wasn’t real, the greatest lie the oil industry ever told us is to convince us that they don’t want oil. Where do we even begin to think about that as possible? They want to control when they produce it and how, and under what terms. They need to show a growing amount of oil that they can count as their reserves.

There are very few big pots of oil left sitting around anywhere unclaimed. The only way to get that is to increase technology, go into very expensive, technologically complex modes of production that face a lot of resistance. Venezuela is a country that [the big oil companies] were producing in not that long ago and making money in not that long ago and have wanted to get back into but on their own terms.

So I think when they protest publicly, one, it’s to distance themselves from Trump’s extremism, but two, it’s a great public negotiating tactic. They’re basically saying publicly, and the media is repeating it, “We wouldn’t want to operate in Venezuela. Oh, my God, it’s expensive, it’s technologically complex.” I actually think those are ridiculous things if you look where else they operate.

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Greg Godels writes on current events, political economy, and the Communist movement from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. Read other articles by Greg, or visit Greg's website.

Why The Taliban Wants To Talk With The US – Analysis

 January 17, 2026 

By James Durso

Before Afghanistan in 2021, America was last defeated by a national liberation movement in Vietnam in 1975. After the fall of Saigon, the “domino theory” assured Americans that Asia would quickly fall to Communism. That didn’t happen, and the ensuing violence (Vietnam’s 1979 invasion of Cambodia and China’s attack on Vietnam) didn’t affect American security. But Eurasia in 2026 is another situation entirely. While Washington waited 19 years to establish diplomatic relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, it shouldn’t delay diplomatic recognition of the new regime in Afghanistan. 

There is a lot going on: Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan fought a short war in May 2025; relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan are tense over the activities of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban) and the Baluchistan Liberation Army; Iran has been accused of developing nuclear weapons and was recently attacked by Israel and America; the region is host to several nascent connectivity networks, and may possess abundant rare earth elements; the Central Asian republics’ economies are rapidly growing; and, everyone depends on Afghanistan for water.

Recent US-Afghanistan history is a history of misunderstandings that caused both sides to commit strategic blunders. 

After the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban erred by not rendering Osama bin Laden to the United States and then proposing that he be tried by a court in an Islamic country. The United States subsequently attacked and occupied the country for 20 years.

After the US attack and rout of the Taliban forces, Taliban leaders attempted to surrender several times, but Washington, intoxicated by a brew of post-Cold War triumphalism and post-9/11 grievance, wanted to make an example of them. America was still the “indispensable nation,” and its neoconservative curators were anxious to operationalize their sacred text, the Fiscal Year 1992 Defense Planning Guidance. 

The Americans failed to understand that the Taliban were Afghan nationalists inspired by Islam instead of transnational Islamists like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. This misunderstanding was the root of the argument that Afghanistan would become a center of terrorism against the West; however, in 2024, a CIA official reported, “The dire predictions have not come to pass.” 

In the 1990s, the only major infrastructure project in the region was the UNOCAL natural gas pipelinefrom Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan. The project collapsed as Afghanistan’s civil war made construction impossible and the Taliban’s international isolation made financing difficult. After the 1998 US embassy bombings, UNOCAL withdrew entirely as the US government claimed Usama bin Laden, who was believed to be in Afghanistan, was behind the bombings.

But in 2026, Afghanistan will be a key part of most of the regional connectivity projects. 

There is the TransAfghan Multimodal Transport Corridor, which aims to create a “southern corridor” linking Central Asia to the Arabian Sea, ultimately connecting to Jebel Ali Port in the United Arab Emirates (UAE); the Termez-Mazar-i-Sharif-Kabul-Peshawar Railway (Kabul Corridor). Uzbekistan is leading the push to revive this long-planned corridor, which would provide Central Asia with direct access to Pakistan’s seaports; and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan–Pakistan Railway (Western Corridor), a parallel route to the Kabul Corridor, as Turkmenistan aims for more direct access to Pakistan’s ports, and Kazakhstan wants to diversify its southern transit options. 

The Iran-Afghanistan-China Strategic Railway Link is a strategic railway linking Iran to China through Afghanistan, and avoids maritime chokepoints between China and West Asia. It was added to Iran’s working agenda in 2025.

Then there is road network expansion in Afghanistan as the government aggressively pursues road upgrades to complement rail corridors and improve internal logistics. And in December 2025, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Finance announced a memorandum of understanding with DP World of the UAE to study potential investment in Afghan port infrastructure. If an agreement is finalized, DP World could help modernize ports such as Hairatan, bordering Uzbekistan, and Torkham, bordering Pakistan. 

According to the China Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Investment Report 2025 H1, the first half of 2025 saw the highest engagement for any six-month period ever, with $66.2 billion in construction contracts and $57.1 billion in investments (greater than BRI engagement in all of 2024, which was $122 billion) BRI’s total engagement since the program’s start in 2013 now totals $1.3 trillion.

Of that spending, $39 billion went to Africa, and $25 billion went to Central Asia. That’s impressive on a per capita basis, as Africa’s population is about 1.5 billion and Central Asia’s is about 84 million.

At the September 2025 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Group in Tianjin, China, Chinese president Xi Jinping met one-on-one with all the leaders of the republics. In the official picture of the meeting attendees, the five republics’ presidents are standing in the front row, a clear signal of China’s intent.

China looks to be in the driver’s seat, but in June 2025, the Taliban shocked Beijing by cancelling the 25-year contract to develop oil fields in the Amu Darya River basin; China had pledged to invest $540 million in the first three years. Each side blamed the other, and Afghanistan has no formal process to resolve disputes, so a resolution may not be imminent. 

In December 2025, Amir Khan Muttaqi, Afghanistan’s foreign minister, told former US ambassador to Kabul Zalmay Khalilzad that US-Afghanistan relations are in a “new phase” and that bilateral relations can be developed through sustained dialogue. Any salesman would recognize that as a “buy signal.” 

In July 2025, Russia became the first country to recognize the Taliban government. But will this delay more American engagement with Afghanistan if President Donald Trump resists being a follower of Russia’s move?

Improved roads in faraway places don’t excite Americans much, but Americans held hostage to unfriendly governments do. In March 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported there were seven Americans“wrongfully detained” in Afghanistan. Five Americans were released in 2025, and the Taliban likely hoped for a positive response from Washington, but nothing happened. 

If President Donald Trump just pockets the winnings, that will weaken the Taliban, who want better ties with Washington; they will be less likely to accommodate the next American initiative, as the penalty may be more severe than premature retirement followed by a think tank sinecure. 

Trump would prefer to get the remaining detainees immediately, but an opportunity may come when he visits Central Asia (he has been invited several times to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan). Tashkent has long dealt with the Taliban and can facilitate the release, but it won’t want to midwife an unfair deal with Kabul, its “forever neighbor.” And Uzbekistan has yet to work out a water-sharing agreement with Kabul over the waters of the Amu Darya, the most critical file for Tashkent.

President Bill Clinton was criticized for restarting ties with Vietnam, and Trump can expect the same for outreach to Afghanistan. In any case, hyperventilating about the Taliban hosting Al Qaeda looks unserious since an Al Qaeda alumnus (Syrian president Ahmed al-Shara) visited the Oval Office and was spritzed with cologne. 

The Taliban beat America fair and square. Now, if Trump really wants to advance US engagement in Central Asia, which includes Afghanistan, he must move beyond low-hanging fruit, like inviting Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to the next G20 meeting, and take decisive action. Clinton weathered the storm, so will Trump.

• This article was published by National Interes

James Durso

James Durso (@james_durso) is a regular commentator on foreign policy and national security matters. Mr. Durso served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and has worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Central Asia.