Interesting that I read elsewhere that most Venezuelan oil goes to China due to the sanctions. Would be nice to see them put a carrier group down there to guard their shipments...
Their whole move to EVs is more about national security as it is about environment. Not having to get into wars about oil because you don’t need so much is it’s own freedom.
they can totally do asymmetrical actions:
- deploy submarines which could attack offenders
- rather fast develop large quantity of ocean attack drones (even Ukraine could do it with rather limited industrial capabilities)
While letting U.S. kit paint the submarines they'll presumably want to use on Taiwan.
> fast develop large quantity of ocean attack drones
This is plausible. (Still not worth it for Beijing. But doable.)
Also, my bet Maduro will still endure multiple months from now.
China would be stupid not to show some force
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-02/us-venezuela-global-a...
https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202505/10/content_WS681e8bd6... (chinese state media)
I guess this will show what "all-weather" is supposed to mean. It doesn't seem to include any military support and at least others are sceptical with respect to the current situations as well:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3335116/china-unlike...
It's possible China has built out its infrastructure in the past 5 years and can process this oil now, but in the 2010s the more common practice was for the Venezuelans to sell the oil to a Chinese intermediary that would transport it on a tanker to the Gulf Coast, where the American refineries capable of processing Venezuelan sour crude are located.
This would be a 4D chess move right off the edge of the game board and into a latrine.
China doesn't want to get involved in an oil war. It doesn't want to send its limited blue-water capabilities into America's backyard to get painted. It doesn't want to deal with oil supply chains against America's nuclear-powered fleet. And it doesn't want to risk Trump popping an aneurysm and disabling their ships, an attack to which all retaliation options carry material risks of nuclear escalation (in a way bombing boats on the other side of the world does not), and which would mean trashing China's and the global economy as the trade war turns blockade.
Essentially all of the existing infrastructure in Venezuela was built by Americans, and is crumbling.
While Venezuela has tremendous amounts of oil, most of it is not very easy to extract profitably.
They could build this. That's orthogonal to planting an oil-burning carrier group halfway around the world next to nuclear CVNs that could be reached from U.S. soil by Cessna 172s.
Oh yes, we completely agree. More to the point, the tens of billions of dollars they'd burn–at a minimum–on a pointless proxy war with the U.S. would be better spent continuing to reduce China's reliance on foreign oil.
Without US expertise and investment the oil in Venezuela will tend to stay in the ground.
Strangely, India does too.
The Nayara refinery (Russian stakeholder) is rather smaller at 390–400 kbd. There are a few other state owned and private refineries in the South that can process heavy crude cumulatively upto a million bpd.
You are right that the equipment was from US (Lummus Technology). However, due to sanctions, the Nayara refinery has begun retrofitting from eastern suppliers.
It is sad that both Venezuela and Iran (and now Russia) are all now under West-enforced oil sanctions. Makes life difficult for poor nations that don't have native oil supply. It is not possible to compete with EU for economic oil purchase in the global market
Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.