The Hole in Donald Trump’s Venezuelan Oil Strategy
June 20th, 2026
Courtesy of the New Yorker, an article on American investors are flocking back to the country’s vast reserves, lured by promises of reform. But the officials who ran the industry into the ground are still the ones in charge. Jarrod Agen, the head of President Donald Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council, was in a celebratory […]
Read more »Venezuela Approves New Law to Open Mining to Foreign Investors
April 10th, 2026
Courtesy of New York Times, a report on Venezuela’s new mining law which opens the country’s coveted mineral fortune up to foreign investors, the latest move that Venezuela’s leadership has taken to satisfy the Trump administration: The Venezuelan National Assembly on Thursday approved a new law meant to modernize the country’s decrepit mining industry and […]
Read more »Exxon CEO Calls Venezuela ‘Uninvestable’ Without ‘Significant Changes’
January 10th, 2026
Courtesy of the Washington Post, a report on Venezuela and lack of oil investor interest: As President Donald Trump pushed U.S. oil companies to commit to invest $100 billion in Venezuela at a White House meeting on Friday, the CEO of ExxonMobil warned the company is far from enlisting. CEO Darren Woods said that Venezuela […]
Read more »Is Venezuela a Critical Minerals Target?
January 6th, 2026
Via the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a look at Venezuela’s critical minerals inventory: On December 25, 1956, the New York Times declared, “Venezuela Finds Big Ore Deposits; Geologists Assert Reserves of Minerals May Approach Nation’s Oil in Importance.” Nearly seven decades later, that promise has largely gone unrealized. Far from emerging as a major global […]
Read more »Venezuela’s Oil Is a Focus of Trump’s Campaign Against Maduro
December 16th, 2025
Courtesy of the New York Times, a report on how – in public – the White House says it is confronting Venezuela to curb drug trafficking but, behind the scenes, gaining access to the country’s vast oil reserves is a priority. The Nobel Peace Prize winner made her pitch by live video to a business […]
Read more »Lots of Oil, Little Production: What to Know About Venezuelan Energy
December 7th, 2025
Via the New York Times, a look at Venezuela: the South American country increasingly at odds with the Trump administration which has the world’s largest oil reserves: Venezuela sits on more oil than Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States and every other country. Yet, it produces and sells only about 1 percent of the crude […]
Read more »Focusing primarily on The New Seven Sisters - the largely state owned petroleum companies from the emerging world that have become key players in the oil & gas industry as identified by Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent for The Financial Times - but spanning other nascent opportunities around the globe that may hold potential in the years ahead, Wildcats & Black Sheep is a place for the adventurous to contemplate & evaluate the emerging markets of tomorrow.