Appearing on a January 6, 2026, episode of Call to Activism with Joe Gallina, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley broke down President Donald Trump’s Venezuela policy, warning that the United States is destabilizing the global order to secure oil that is costly, difficult to refine, and of inferior quality, while China continues to consolidate control over far more valuable resources.
“This heavy, tar-ish oil that comes out of Venezuela — it is not very good stuff,” Merkley said during the podcast appearance. “There’s only a few refineries — one in Texas, in China — that refine it; they have to be built specially for it. It’s expensive to take out of the ground, it’s expensive to pipe — you have to reheat it to move it around. It is a mess.”
