High costs, falling returns: what could go wrong for Trump’s Venezuela oil gamble?

US faces big challenges in trying to unlock tremendous wealth' from Venezuela's long-neglected oil industry

Donald Trump has laid claim to billions of dollars' worth of Venezuelan crude this week, which at a stroke has handed the world's biggest consumer of oil up to 50m barrels - but his ambitions are far greater.

The White House said Venezuela would be turning over" the nearly $3bn (2.3bn) of crude stranded in tankers and storage facilities before it is sold on the international market and after that the US plans to control all the country's oil sales indefinitely".