President Donald Trump’s seizure of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, oil blockade on the country and vow to control its oil sales indefinitely have thrown the nation’s economy into turmoil and upended trade with key importers.
That’s part of the point, the White House says. The administration says it wants access to Venezuela’s oil and to deny it to adversaries that have long kept a foothold in the country.
Venezuela under Maduro counted China, Cuba, Iran and Russia among its close partners. Most of Venezuela’s oil exports went to China last year, and while Cuba took in a much smaller share, that portion made up a major part of its overall imports.
The United States said Thursday that it had completed its first sale of Venezuelan oil, “a $500 million energy deal,” according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt — representing a portion of the 30 million to 50 million barrels the administration has said it intends to sell.
“No more using the oil industry to enrich all our adversaries around the world,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on “Meet the Press” on Jan. 4.
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves but pumps less than 1 percent of global output, at about 1 million barrels of oil per day.
Here’s where Venezuela sends its crude oil, and the extent to which the recipients rely on it:
China
At least until Trump stepped in, most of Venezuela’s crude went to China. But for China that supply amounted to less than 5 percent of its total crude imports in 2025, according to Vortexa, an oil analytics firm.
Vortexa’s crude oil import and export data — gathered in the absence of complete official figures from Venezuela — draws on satellite imagery, information from port agents, customs data and signal monitoring, among other sources, to piece together a full picture, said Samantha Hartke, the firm’s head of market analysis for the Americas.
Ever since the U.S. intensified sanctions on Venezuela in 2019, China has been taking in Venezuelan crude at a heavily discounted rate, said David Goldwyn, chairman of the energy advisory group at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.
India and the U.S. took in larger quantities of Venezuelan oil before sanctions stood in the way.
It is unclear to what extent Venezuelan exports to China have been disrupted because of the embargo on tankers under U.S. sanctions since the ouster of Maduro. U.S. forces have seized six tankers operating under U.S. sanctions, four of them since Maduro’s ouster.
“In a way, not much has changed for China because the Venezuelan old guard, who Chinese officials built relations with, is still there,” said Roxanna Vigil, an international-affairs fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations think tank. “But what it means for Trump to run the country, and potentially the old guard, is still an unanswered question.”
If the U.S. completely took over, China would face a political loss, Vigil said. At the same time, China also stands to gain from a rebuilding of Venezuela’s economy and oil sector because it is a major creditor for the country, she said. Venezuela has defaulted on almost all of its debts to China, and the two countries have agreed that some Venezuelan debt payment would be made through oil exports.
The ongoing blockade and interdictions “have sort of materially interrupted supplies of subsidized Venezuelan crude to China,” said Goldwyn, adding that this disruption is probably unwelcome but not risky. “That’s because China also gets heavily discounted crude from Russia, thanks to U.S. sanctions.”
China also buys sanctioned and discounted crude from Iran, and independent Chinese refiners are now expected to pivot to sources including Iran to replace Venezuela’s stalled crude, according to traders and analysts, Reuters reported Jan. 7.
China has been using the discounted oil price period to replenish its strategic stocks, said Goldwyn, and has prepared itself well for potential disruption by diversifying its energy mix. China has also made big investments in solar, wind and hydro in the last 15 years, and now supersedes all other countries in the installations of wind and solar power.
United States
Recent U.S. oil imports from Venezuela have been relatively modest.
If Venezuelan crude imports to the U.S. were to cease for any reason, the change would amount to a disruption, without major impact, said Goldwyn. Venezuela is a supplier of convenience for the U.S. because the U.S. Gulf Coast refineries are well-tooled and well-suited for Venezuela’s dense crude oil.
The type of oil that Venezuela exports is a heavy, sour crude, very different from the far lighter, clearer shale oil found in the U.S., and it can be shipped only to countries such as the U.S. that have expensive refineries to process it into gasoline, diesel and other products.
“It costs some money to retool your refinery for the chemistry of other crudes,” said Goldwyn. “The Citgo refineries and other gulf refineries would welcome larger supplies of Venezuelan crude.”
Trump’s move to take over Venezuela’s oil industry comes at a time when the U.S. oil market is in an oversupply and prices are fairly low and declining, said Goldwyn.
But the Trump administration’s plan for the oil, according to a Department of Energy fact sheet, involves “marketing Venezuelan crude oil in the global marketplace” and funneling the proceeds into “U.S. controlled accounts,” to “be disbursed for the benefit of the American people and the Venezuelan people at the discretion of the U.S. government.”
The largest obstacle to foreign investment in Venezuelan oil is U.S. sanctions, said Goldwyn. The fact sheet said the U.S. would roll back some sanctions but did not go into detail.
The U.S. says it has sold a first batch of Venezuelan oil in a deal, the specifics of which remain murky. In remarks Thursday, Leavitt credited Venezuela’s new president, Delcy Rodríguez, for facilitating the transition.
“We obviously had a $500 million energy deal that was struck in large part because of the cooperation from Ms. Rodríguez,” Leavitt told reporters.
Trump called a meeting of oil executives last week to discuss proposed investments of $100 billion in the Venezuelan oil industry to upgrade its production and distribution capabilities. ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods said in response to a question from Trump that Venezuela would be “uninvestable” until major commercial and legal changes were made.
“President Trump’s team is facilitating positive, ongoing discussions with oil companies that are ready and willing to make unprecedented investments to restore Venezuela’s oil infrastructure,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Friday.
Cuba
Shortly after Maduro was captured, Trump said that Cuba, an ally of Venezuela so close that Cuban security guards often served as Maduro’s bodyguards, looked “ready to fall.”
Trump told reporters on Air Force One, “They got all of their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil.”
Cuba, plagued by power cuts and lacking fuel for cars, has for many decades been reliant on Venezuela for its crude oil supply and for some petroleum products. The island nation could be significantly affected by losing that flow, said Goldwyn.
However, given the modest volume of Cuba’s crude imports, it could look to other sources.
“Cuba also imports crude oil from Russia and from Mexico,” said Goldwyn.
Russia, a key ally of Maduro’s Venezuela that loaned the country billions of dollars, has exploration rights for swaths of its untapped natural gas and oil reserves. After the U.S. seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker on Jan. 7, Moscow condemned the action but did not rush to a confrontation.
In 2024, Cuba imported 79 percent of its crude from Mexico, according to Vortexa data. It’s unclear whether Cuba pivoted to importing more oil from Venezuela in 2025 because of political pressure from the Trump administration on Mexico or the Central American country’s own production declines.
Other analysts, including Michael J. Bustamante, an associate professor of history and the director of the Cuban studies program at the University of Miami, told The Washington Post that they were skeptical that the loss of Venezuelan oil would push Cuba into economic collapse.
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