The capture of Nicolas Maduro early this month brought into sharper focus Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and U.S. officials from President Trump to Howard Lutnick the Commerce Secretary and other leading politicians have been talking about how this resource could be tapped. However, Venezuela’s natural resources are a lot more than just oil, and Trump made mention of several others that the U.S. could tap. We explore some of those other resources that make this South American country an enviable source of needed minerals.
The natural gas reserves of Venezuela command position number nine among the most extensive reserves of this resource globally. According to IEA data for 2023, Venezuela hosts 73% of all the natural gas reserves within the South American region. Estimates put its holdings at 195tn cubic feet of this resource, with about 80% of this volume linked to the oil reserves of the country. The country’s exports of this resource largely come as a by-product of the process of extracting crude oil.
Venezuela is also rich in gold. Estimates indicate that it possesses about 161.2 tons of gold reserves, making the country rank first among South American countries that have gold. Untapped gold deposits are also vast, though scant data on the subject makes it hard to project the value of this resource still in the ground.
Hugo Chavez, a former president, sought to extract this resource within the Orinoco region and Maduro took steps to further act on these plans of gold mining. A 2018 report published by the government indicated that reserves are approximately 644 tons of the precious metal, though actual volumes could be a lot higher.
U.S. sanctions, economic instability and other factors have held back the country from extracting this gold, and many mining contracts signed with multinational corporations have remained on paper without any boots on the ground.
Other proven or unproven resources in the country include 3 billion tons of coal, 14.6 billion tons of iron ore, 99.4 million tons of bauxite, and 1.2 million carats of diamonds, among many other minerals. These extensive deposits of resources make Venezuela a potentially very rich nation if measures are put in place to extract and sell the wealth in the ground.
This is the reason why a geopolitical storm could brew around the country in the wake of the U.S. abduction of its president and plans to run the country until “a just transition of power” can be implemented.
China and Russia have for long been major trading partners of Venezuela and it remains to be seen how they will respond to this spanner thrown into their relationship with the country.
Entities like Collective Mining Ltd. (NYSE American: CNL) (TSX: CNL) within the mineral exploration industry will be keeping an eye on how events linked to Venezuela unfold since any developments there could have ramifications for the wider mining sector and its investors.
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