January 3, 2026 – remember this date because this will be on an APUSH test soon. January 3 is the day the US kidnapped the Venezuelan President and First Lady. So how does this work – how does one just take another country’s leader? Surely you need more than a black van and a bag of candy. Follow along because this story apparently spans multiple terms of the presidency.
Venezuela’s history with oil production is a long one. It started in the 1900s, when oil began to seep through the surface, and by the 1960s, Venezuela had an oil reserve 550 km long and 45 km wide. The only problem – the oil in the Orinoco Belt had migrated to shallower regions, and this interaction with the elements caused it to lose its lighter components. In the end, the oil became a heavy, incapable-of-flowing mass, and the technology to mine it hadn’t been created yet. Finally, in the 2000s, the technology was created, and this brings us to Venezuela’s history of debt.
The 2000s were meant to be a prosperous time for Venezuela as oil prices began to climb. Finally, the heavy, previously thought uneconomical oil became more “economically recoverable.” As a result, the government invited experts to determine how much Orinoco could be commercially used. Unfortunately, these experts were not exactly unbiased third-party experts. The PVDSA (Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A), now owned by Venezuela, was the one to report the increased proven reserves from “around 75 billion barrels to 100 billion.” By 2025, OPEC had estimated Venezuela’s reserves at “1.24 trillion barrels.” This is the same OPEC on which stands Caracas, a founding member that could greatly benefit from “the resource power granted by a larger portion of world proven reserves.”
Regardless, Venezuela was able to use the proven oil reserves as collateral to loan money for its own uses. The loans grew, but the process of extracting the oil hit a pipeblock. Hugo Chávez, in the “Bolivarian Revolution”, fired many of the employees at PVDSA who led a strike against his policy changes. However, Chávez invited foreign countries to send experts to reevaluate the proven reserves at the Orinoco (called Proyecto Magna Reserva). While they were not able to corroborate Chávez’s claims, they did confirm that a large reserve existed.
Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro (aka the kidnapped president) exploited the Orinoco to get larger loans. However, the lack of trained officials and high maintenance fees eventually ran the reserves into the ground. Chávez’s disastrous demands of companies to hand over their stakes in the Orinoco to the PVDSA eventually led the foreign companies to withdraw all investments. The oil reserves remain in Venezuela, but the high price of production has caused the oil to stay stagnant and the country to fall into deep debt.
As US President Trump came into office, he placed sanctions on Venezuela to dissuade its growing relationship with China. It started with the US banning a new PVDSA or Venezuelan Government debt in 2017. The new sanctions in 2025 have been placed on restricting the movements of shipping companies and traders in hopes of curbing Venezuela’s relations with China and Russia. This brings us to the kidnapping of 2025.
John Bolton, former national security adviser to President Trump, stated that Trump was “very interested in Venezuelan oil” during his first term. Bolton, however, stated that they were unable to keep the president “focused” on the topic. However, this seems to have changed as the US President came into his second term and has conducted an illegal attack to forcefully take the Venezuelan president. Nicolás Maduro has had allegations of human rights violations and has been officially brought to the US for “drug and terrorism charges,” but the abduction, as shown, was not geared to help the people of Venezuela.
Ultimately, Venezuela’s crisis reveals how quickly natural resources can become an immense liability. It also shows the dangerous political graylands we live in now. Today marks the twenty-second day the President of Venezuela has been held in the US. Despite the accusations against Maduro, the abduction still crosses political boundaries, forcing us to question the precedent it sets and what it could mean for our futures.