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Comment by HDThoreaun | Hacker News Reader

Venezuelan oil is kind of crappy. I would say the two biggest reasons for this are 1. Trump wanting migrants from Venezuela to stop and 2. Ending Venezuelan support for Cuba. Oil is definitely one of the reasons though.

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Venezuelan oil is very heavy, but the US oil industry is literally designed to process this type. The US exports their sweet crude elsewhere because they can't process it.

How much of that do you think is idle?

It is heavy crude but it's what our refineries are set up to use. There was a very informative news report on this recently posted to youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgwny1BiCYk

Apparently shale oil mostly comes out as light, so our own production doesn't feed our refineries and we've increasingly taken to importing heavy crude.

Where are you people getting your information that the USA somehow has idle heavy oil processing despite record production levels?

I literally linked my source. It's less than 7 minutes long. It's not that refineries are idle, it's that we have to import the heavy crude to keep them producing. Heavy crude went from 12% of imports to 70% as of 2025. The most relevant graphs, if you really can't stomach 7 minutes of video, are shown from 3:30 - 4:30ish in the video. And again, record production levels of shale oil is producing LIGHT crude. The information you're seeking has already been provided to you.

Hey Abigail, just following up. Were you able to find the information you needed? Where'd ya go?

Maybe worth mentioning I posted this before seeing the news about Maduro being captured. No idea whether/how that might change the calculus.

Yup it's the oil.

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/03/g-s1-104346/trump-venezuela-m...

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