Camila Domonoske

Venezuela's oil production has dropped sharply from what its highs were, currently making less than a million barrels a day.

It used to make more than 3 million barrels a day, right?

And the infrastructure that's required to do that has really decayed.

It's corroded.

Things have been stolen.

Things have broken.

There's not power that's needed to run equipment.

A lot of the expertise has left the country.

It is really difficult to rebuild that kind of capacity.

It's one thing to redirect the barrels that Venezuela is still managing to make.

It is a totally different proposition to talk about significantly increasing

how much oil the country is making.

And that is clearly what President Trump wants to see.

He wants the US oil companies to go in and invest billions of dollars in doing that.

And he says that companies are gung-ho about that.

What I am hearing from people in the oil industry is that there is a lot of caution because one, companies lost billions of dollars in Venezuela before when contracts were forcibly renegotiated and some of their property was seized, right?

And there is concern

Currently, fairly low oil prices.

The global benchmark is just above $60 right now.

I've talked with analysts who say that the break-even price, the point you would need to make a profit in Venezuela right now, is more like $80 oil.