Venezuela’s extensive natural resources have reemerged within Washington’s strategic agenda, with its potential mineral reserves now portrayed as matters of national significance, although specialists caution that transforming these aspirations into tangible results is considerably more intricate than political discourse implies.
When Donald Trump announced that U.S. companies would be allowed to tap into Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the spotlight swiftly broadened far beyond petroleum, and policy discussions increasingly began to encompass minerals, metals, and even rare earth elements thought to lie beneath Venezuelan territory, resources considered vital across sectors such as defense, aerospace, clean energy, and consumer technology, and now central to U.S. national security deliberations.
Although drawing on Venezuela’s wider pool of resources might seem appealing in theory, experts warn it carries significant unpredictability. The extent, quality, and economic feasibility of much of this material remain uncertain, and the political, security, and environmental challenges tied to extraction are substantial. Consequently, most specialists concur that even a forceful effort from Washington would be unlikely to provide meaningful relief to America’s overburdened supply chains in the short or medium term.
Strategic interest beyond oil
For decades, Venezuela has been synonymous with oil. Its proven crude reserves rank among the largest in the world, shaping its economy and its fraught relationship with the United States. However, recent geopolitical shifts have expanded the definition of “strategic resources” far beyond hydrocarbons. Critical minerals and rare earth elements are now seen as indispensable inputs for advanced manufacturing, renewable energy systems and military hardware.
Officials within the administration have signaled an awareness that Venezuela’s value may extend beyond petroleum. According to Reed Blakemore of the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center, there is recognition that the country may hold a wider array of natural assets. However, he and others emphasize that acknowledging potential is not the same as being able to exploit it.
The difficulties linked to mining and exporting minerals in Venezuela are, in many ways, even more formidable than those confronting the oil industry, since oil extraction benefits from existing infrastructure and well-established global markets, whereas developing the mineral sector would demand broad geological assessments, substantial financial commitments and enduring stability — requirements that Venezuela does not currently meet.
Uncertainty beneath the surface
Years of political turmoil, economic decline and international isolation have left Venezuela with scarce trustworthy geological information, making any effort to develop its mineral resources extremely challenging. In contrast to nations that maintain transparent reporting systems and ongoing exploration, Venezuela’s underground assets remain only partially charted and are frequently described in uncertain, speculative terms.
The United States Geological Survey does not list Venezuela among countries with confirmed rare earth element reserves. This omission does not mean such resources are absent, but it underscores how little verified information exists. Experts believe Venezuela may host deposits of minerals such as coltan, a source of tantalum and niobium, as well as bauxite, which can yield aluminum and gallium. All of these metals are considered critical minerals by U.S. authorities.
Past Venezuelan leaders have issued bold statements about these resources; in 2009, former president Hugo Chávez publicly highlighted extensive coltan findings, presenting them as a valuable national asset. Under Nicolás Maduro, the government later created the Orinoco Mining Arc, a vast zone designated for mineral exploration and extraction. In reality, though, the initiative became closely associated with environmental harm, unlawful mining activities and the involvement of armed groups.
Security, governance, and environmental challenges
Mining is an inherently disruptive activity, requiring stable governance, enforceable regulations and long-term security guarantees. In Venezuela, these conditions are largely absent. Many of the regions believed to contain valuable minerals are remote and weakly governed, making them vulnerable to illegal operations.
Armed groups and criminal networks remain firmly embedded in illegal gold extraction in several regions of the country, as noted in numerous independent reports. With minimal oversight, these actors fuel violence, widespread deforestation and severe environmental contamination. Bringing in legitimate, large-scale mining operations under such conditions would be extremely challenging without sustained improvements in security and the enforcement of the rule of law.
Rare earth mining presents additional challenges. Extracting and processing these elements is energy-intensive and can generate hazardous waste if not properly managed. In countries with strict environmental standards, these risks translate into higher costs and longer project timelines. In Venezuela, where regulatory enforcement is weak, the environmental consequences could be severe, further complicating any attempt to attract responsible international investors.
As Blakemore has observed, even with favorable expectations, transporting Venezuelan minerals to international markets would prove a far tougher undertaking than developing oil. In the absence of reliable assurances on security, environmental safeguards, and consistent policies, only a handful of companies would consider investing the massive sums such initiatives demand.
China’s commanding role in processing and refining
Even if U.S. firms managed to clear the obstacles involved in extraction, they would still face another looming bottleneck: processing. Obtaining raw materials represents only the initial phase of the supply chain, and when it comes to rare earths, the refinement and separation stages are both the most technologically demanding and the most capital‑intensive.
Here, China maintains a powerful lead. The International Energy Agency reported that, in 2024, China was responsible for over 90% of the world’s refined rare earth output. This overwhelming position stems from decades of government backing, assertive industrial strategies and relatively relaxed environmental oversight.
As Joel Dodge of the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator has observed, China’s near-monopoly on processing confers both industrial and geopolitical leverage. Even if rare earths are mined elsewhere, they are often shipped to China for refining, reinforcing Beijing’s central role in the supply chain.
This reality complicates Washington’s strategic calculations. Securing access to raw materials in Venezuela would do little to reduce dependence on China unless parallel investments were made in domestic or allied refining capacity. Such investments would take years to materialize and face their own regulatory and environmental hurdles.
Strategic importance of critical minerals for national security
The United States currently classifies 60 minerals as critical because of their vital role in economic and national security, a roster that covers metals like aluminum, cobalt, copper, lead and nickel, along with 15 rare earth elements including neodymium, dysprosium and samarium, all of which are woven into everyday technologies such as smartphones, batteries, wind turbines and electric vehicles, and remain indispensable for sophisticated weapons systems.
Despite their name, rare earth elements are not particularly scarce in the Earth’s crust. As geographer Julie Klinger has explained, the difficulty lies not in their abundance but in the complexity of extracting and refining them in an economically and environmentally sustainable way. This distinction is often lost in political discourse, leading to exaggerated expectations about the strategic value of unproven deposits.
U.S. lawmakers have expressed growing concern about reliance on foreign suppliers for these materials, particularly amid rising tensions with China. In response, there have been efforts to expand domestic mining and processing capacity. However, such projects face long timelines, community opposition and stringent environmental reviews, meaning they are unlikely to deliver quick results.
Venezuela’s constrained influence in the coming years
Against this backdrop, expectations that Venezuela could emerge as a significant supplier of critical minerals appear unrealistic. Analysts at BloombergNEF and other research institutions point to a combination of factors that severely constrain the country’s prospects: outdated or nonexistent geological data, a shortage of skilled labor, entrenched organized crime, chronic underinvestment and an unpredictable policy environment.
Sung Choi of BloombergNEF has suggested that although Venezuela holds significant theoretical geological potential, the country is expected to remain a marginal player in global critical mineral markets for at least another decade, a view shaped not only by the technical hurdles of extraction but also by the wider institutional shortcomings that discourage sustained investment.
For the United States, this means that ambitions to diversify supply chains cannot rely on Venezuela as a quick fix. Even if diplomatic relations were to improve and sanctions eased, the structural barriers would remain formidable.
Geopolitics versus economic reality
The renewed emphasis on Venezuela’s resources underscores a familiar strain in global economic decision-making: the disconnect between geopolitical ambitions and what is economically achievable. Strategically, the prospect of tapping underexploited minerals in the Western Hemisphere carries strong appeal, supporting broader attempts to lessen reliance on competing powers while ensuring access to materials essential for tomorrow’s industries.
However, the development of natural resources is shaped by unavoidable practical constraints, as mining endeavors depend on dependable institutions, clear regulatory frameworks and long-term commitments from both governments and companies, while also relying on local community acceptance and credible, robust environmental protections.
In Venezuela’s case, these foundations have been steadily weakened by decades of political upheaval, and restoring them would call for long-term reforms that reach far beyond what any single trade or energy initiative could achieve.
A sober assessment of expectations
Experts ultimately advise approaching political claims about Venezuela’s resources with care, noting that although the nation’s subterranean riches are frequently depicted as immense and potentially game‑changing, available evidence points to a much narrower reality, with oil standing as Venezuela’s most clearly identifiable asset, yet even that sector continues to encounter substantial production hurdles.
Minerals and rare earth elements introduce added complexity, given uncertain reserves, costly extraction and global supply chains controlled by dominant actors. For the United States, obtaining these resources will probably hinge more on diversified sourcing, recycling, technological advances and strengthening domestic capacity than on pushing into new frontiers within politically volatile areas.
As the global race for critical minerals intensifies, Venezuela will continue to feature in strategic discussions. Yet without profound changes on the ground, its role is likely to remain marginal. Ambition alone cannot substitute for data, stability and infrastructure — the essential ingredients of any successful resource strategy.
