Camila Domonoske

What that means is that the oil that Venezuela has been producing, a lot of it has not been able to get out and it has been building up in storage.

So when the president talks about these 30 to 50 million barrels, that, based on what officials have said, that's what they're talking about.

This oil that couldn't leave the country because of the blockade built up in storage.

It's not safe.

new oil.

This isn't massively increasing production in Venezuela, like the president has also talked about.

We can talk about that more later.

This is the oil that the country has been making already and has not been able to sell.

Yeah.

So it's well over a month of production from Venezuela.

It's a few days worth of U.S.

oil consumption.

So we burn through that much oil in just a few days.

And it's worth a chunk of change.

Even at a discount, you're talking well over a billion dollars worth of oil.

And I'll also note this oil, if it weren't for the blockade, would be going on to international markets, almost certainly to China.

A lot of Venezuelan oil has been being sold to China, evading sanctions, selling at a steep discount.

So Venezuela is not making as much money as it would have been.

That was part of the point of the sanctions.

But so this is really redirecting that oil.