Ben Rhodes

Bloomberg says it takes five days to load a tanker with oil versus one day seven years ago.

The machinery there they describe as being ransacked and sold on the black market.

One of the main refineries only operates intermittently.

All the professional people were fired by Hugo Chavez back in the day, and many of them never came back.

And so they quoted an expert in the Bloomberg piece who said it will take 100 billion to get production back up to the 1970s peak, which is 3.5 million barrels a day.

NPR cited an even higher figure, 183 billion, to get production back to the 90s levels, which is about 3 million barrels a day.

Like you said, Ben, I mean, Trump wants the money for those investments to come from the oil companies.

But as the Exxon guy said, they're anxious about it.

And in some cases, they are still angry about Chavez nationalizing the industry and taking their stuff back in the 2000s.

And Exxon actually still wants to be reimbursed.

for billions from that time.

And at the meeting last week, Trump dismissed the idea of like oil reparations for these companies saying, we're not going to look at what people lost in the past because that was their fault.

That was a different president.

You're going to make a lot of money, but we're not going back, end quote.

And then on top of that, like Venezuela's oil itself is kind of challenging.

It's known as heavy sour crude, which is expensive to extract and refine and is very corrosive.

Does not taste good.

And the economist says that the break even price for the main Venezuelan project exceed $80 a barrel.

But global prices now are around $60 a barrel, and Trump wants them down to 50.

But if we get down to $50 a barrel, that's going to destroy the US shale industry.