Raymond Zucaro, an emerging-markets fund manager with family in Venezuela, started with the arithmetic. Venezuela pumps about 1.2 million barrels a day, up 50 percent since Maduro's removal, and might reach two million in a year with real investment.
Hormuz has been taking roughly ten million a day off the world for six months.
The reserve sits at a 40-year low. Nothing about that adds up.
The 65 billion figure is reserves, not deliveries: a no-bid, 100-year concession over Venezuela's oil handed to a single company, one year longer than Britain's lease on Hong Kong's New Territories.
Since the government changed, roughly $15 billion in oil revenue has been generated and about half has reached the country.
The fields are intact, unlike Kuwait's in 1991, so the oil is recoverable with capital.
Raymond doubts who provides it, after two nationalizations:
"I don't think ExxonMobil is going to go in for a third time"
Which points at the deal's real audience.
Tehran reads a century-long concession and offshore revenue as the shape of surrender, and a country that survived zero exports during Covid and the killing of its leader concludes that fighting costs less.
@RayZucaro @WeTheBrandon
