Crude oil changes trend and now rises after US intervention in Venezuela

Madrid.- Oil prices, which had fallen for much of today's session, have changed trend and now show slight increases after the US intervention in Venezuela and after OPEC+ confirmed its decision to maintain the production level until April.

According to data from Bloomberg collected by EFE, at 13:00 hours (12:00 GMT), Brent, the benchmark crude oil in Europe, rose 0.43% and the barrel exceeded 61 dollars, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI), a reference in the US, rose 0.49% and was trading around 57.6 dollars per barrel. Crude oil prices had risen in the early moments of the session and subsequently deflated and registered falls, to now trade again with slight increases, which reflects the indecision of the crude oil market. eToro's senior market analyst Javier Molina believes that the US intervention in Venezuela can generate "tactical movements and volatility spikes", but points out that this type of event "rarely" alters the structural trend of risk assets. The American president, Donald Trump, demanded this Sunday to the new Venezuelan leader, Delcy Rodríguez, "full access" to Venezuela's natural resources.

"What we need (from Delcy Rodríguez) is total access. Total access to oil and other things in the country that allow us to rebuild it," he emphasized.

For the Head of Capital Markets Strategies at Tikehau Capital, Raphaël Thuin, the global economic impact of Venezuela is "limited" and rules out that the long-term market prospects will be affected. However, Thuin does consider that "positive catalysts" could occur in the oil market, as the US administration aims to "facilitate the exit of more Venezuelan oil to world markets". Economist and founder of Fortuna SFP, José Manuel Marín Cebrián, points out that the greatest risk lies in a "logistical collapse" resulting from years of sanctions, institutional deterioration, and obsolete infrastructure in Venezuela. In the same vein, Banca March analysts believe that the impact on the price of oil in the short term will be "minimal" as the recovery capacity of Venezuelan production is "very limited and will require high investments".

US interested in refining Venezuelan crude

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained this Sunday that one of the main interests of his Administration is to refine Venezuela's heavy crude oil, the country with the world's largest oil reserves, in U.S. refineries.

"Our refineries on the US Gulf Coast are the best for refining this heavy crude. In fact, there has been a shortage of heavy crude worldwide, so I believe there would be enormous demand and interest from the private industry if they were given the opportunity to do so," Rubio explained on ABC News.

Hours earlier, OPEC+, which groups OPEC members and other oil powers like Russia, had confirmed its decision to keep its crude oil supply stable at least until April, without reacting to the capture of the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, by the U.S. The decision was made in a brief teleconference held on Sunday by the energy and oil ministers of Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman. Those eight countries are the ones that in 2023 applied voluntary production cuts to support prices. However, in April 2025 they began to gradually reverse those reductions with monthly increases that represented a strategic shift to regain their market share. The total increase between April and December amounted to 2.9 million barrels per day (mbd), which represents about 2.8% of world production. The group still has over a million barrels per day to complete the dismantling of the volumes voluntarily cut (one of 2.2 mbd and another of 1.65 mbd), but in November it decided to "pause" the monthly increases during the first quarter of 2026, a measure that the ministers confirmed on Sunday.