“We know that Venezuela has the world’s largest reserves of oil, and we know they’re certainly underproducing their prior peaks by quite a wide margin, just about one million barrels of oil versus peak levels of over 3.5 million decades ago,” Madden said.

“But I think it’s a leap too far to think that all those barrels are going to come immediately back to market and flood the U.S. Gulf Coast and Midwest refineries with Venezuelan heavy crude.”

…

Madden said he thinks the situation in Venezuela will have a muted impact on the U.S. market. He said Venezuela is a smaller player in the global economy, with a mostly non-existent trading relationship with the U.S. due to sanctions.

“I think the market is signalling that it’s business as usual, so I think we have to distance the legal and the moral value judgments from the economic reality of it,” he said.

This is about oil, but it isn’t about necessarily pumping more oil NOW, it is more like a diamond mine buying up (well in this case seizing by lethal force) diamond reserves… to keep anyone else from digging them up and driving down current prices.

Venezuelan oil MUST remain off of the world markets by and large in order for the current glut of oil production not to be an economic dead end for oil production companies in the US and elsewhere who overcommitted in a world where EV vehicles are proliferating at a rapid pace.

Ironically the US attacks on Venezuela are about the most anti-capitalist anti-competitive behavior you could imagine.