The theory sounds straightforward. Venezuela has vast oil reserves and used to produce more than three times as much volume as it does now. Therefore it should be a simple matter to upgrade the crumbling kit with an injection of dollars and watch the extra barrels and profits flow.
That, roughly speaking, is the only clear part of Donald Trump’s plan for what happens next in Venezuela. “We’re going to have our very large US oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure – the oil infrastructure – and start making money for the country,” he said at the weekend.
