Drilling Into The Details Of Venezuela’s Oil

IRA FLATOW: Hi. I’m Ira Flatow. And this is Science Friday. There’s been a lot talk about Venezuela’s deep reserves of crude oil. So today on the podcast, we’re going to drill into the details. What’s involved in actually bringing it to market? Who wants it? And what is it good for? Joining me now is Dr. Jennifer Miskimins. She’s the President of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and head of the petroleum engineering department at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. Welcome to Science Friday.

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Thank you, Ira. I appreciate it. I appreciate you having me.

IRA FLATOW: You’re welcome. Can we start with the basics? Tell us about oil. Is all oil created equal?

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: No, it’s not. And that’s actually a pretty strong misconception, I think, out there. I blame The Beverly Hillbillies. Everybody–

IRA FLATOW: Jed Clampett, huh?

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Jed Clampett. They see black gold. But no, not all oils are created equal. They can be something from very clear and looks like water to something that looks like a really heavy tar or asphalt. And it has a lot to do with the geology that it was actually deposited in.

IRA FLATOW: So you could have a really sludgy or almost looking like diesel fuel coming out.

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And it makes it a little more challenging, both from, as you mentioned, the production and the refining side of things.

IRA FLATOW: Let’s talk about the kind of oil Venezuela has. So what should I be picturing?

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Sure. So like you mentioned, they have a lot of reserves. They have a lot of oil. In fact, they’re considered the number one in the world. But to your point, not all of that oil is the same. Some of it very much does look like the Beverly Hillbillies, a more liquid black kind of crude type of thing. But actually, a tremendous amount of their reserves are what we call a heavy oil. They’re very large molecules. And if you want to visualize it, La Brea Tar Pits in Southern California is a good visualization.

IRA FLATOW: Ah, yes.

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Yeah. It’s that really heavy, kind of gunky– it’s got to be hot. In warm days, it’s going to move a lot faster than– if it’s cold, it doesn’t want to go anywhere.

IRA FLATOW: So if I have one type of oil versus another, can I make all the same stuff? Or do I need a specific grade to make specific stuff?

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: You need a specific grade to make specific stuff. Yeah. A lot of what we produce, say, in West Texas– in fact, it’s called West Texas Intermediate– it is something that can be made into gasoline that would go into the cars. Some other types of oil does make diesel, does make jet fuel, does make petrochemicals. So the short answer to your question is no, it doesn’t all make the same products. And we kind of need– it’s a good thing. It’s a full suite to be able to make all the products that come out of it.

IRA FLATOW: I’ve heard the term sweet and sour. What does that refer to?

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Yeah, so sweet and sour refers to the sulfur content. If an oil is sweet, it does not have sulfur in it, or it’s a very, very, very small amount. If it’s sour, it does have sulfur in it, sometimes even additional what we consider contaminants, like hydrogen sulfide. And that makes it a type of oil that does need to be processed a lot more.

IRA FLATOW: That brings me back to the heavier Venezuelan gooey stuff. Can any refinery deal with it? Or do you need a special refinery for that?

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Definitely need a special refinery. When the refinery processes are happening, they take that basic material, and then they break some of the bonds of the actual molecules, and it breaks it into different components. And that’s what we see come out of the process. When you have that Venezuelan oil, you have these really massive molecules, and you got to start breaking them down from that large size before you can get it into these smaller sizes that we can break a little bit differently. So refineries that handle things like the Venezuelan oil, they have to have those vessels that can break down those bigger molecules to start with.

IRA FLATOW: And where would those be in the US?

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: In the US, Gulf Coast. A quite a bit of them are in the Gulf Coast area. They all handle different types of these different crudes, and they’re set up to handle these different crudes. But yeah, it’s mostly in the Gulf Coast that we handle those type.

IRA FLATOW: So that’s why Chevron is bringing the oil to the Gulf states because that’s where the refinery is.

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Exactly, bingo. And when you look at some of these large companies, these multi-dimensional companies– so Chevron operates some oil and gas fields. But they also have a downstream branch that handles transportation and refining. And so they’re not necessarily producing the oil in Venezuela. But they’re taking what comes out, and yeah, they’re bringing it to the refineries.

IRA FLATOW: Let’s talk money because we all know the world works on money. I heard oil experts say that since the bulk of Venezuela’s oil is not just sitting in barrels waiting to be shipped, given the neglected oil infrastructure in the country, it could take 10 years and tens of billions of dollars to actually drill and pump the oil out of Venezuela. Is that how you hear it?

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Yeah. It is. So oil does not flow to the surface all the time. There’s a certain pressure in the ground. And early in a well’s life, many times that oil will flow to the surface. But that pressure depletes over time. It’s like opening up a soda can and losing all the carbon dioxide out of it. You lose all of that pressure. So what happens then is we have to put in pumps.

And so anytime you start to put in pumps, you start to run into what we call lifting costs. And that’s kind of like it sounds. It’s the cost of lifting that oil out of the ground to the surface. Then you throw in a crude like this heavy oil in Venezuela. Sometimes you actually have to heat it up in the ground to make it flow to the pump and the well and up to the surface.

So all of that tends to add more and more cost. And then you throw in the situation in Venezuela, where we have a infrastructure that has quite honestly been neglected for quite some time. It’s going to take a lot of work to bring it not only back to full operation, but back to standards that are acceptable in today’s world from a safety and environmental and sustainability type situation. Yeah.

IRA FLATOW: And that can take a lot of time and a lot of money.

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Both, lots of time, lots of money. When oil and gas companies go into these big projects, even like an offshore platform, that can take 10 years to get something like that started up. So yeah, it’s a long-term haul.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. Is there a big financial demand for Venezuelan kind of oil, enough to make all that worthwhile?

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: That’s a really good question. We get now some of that oil, and the world gets some of that oil, from some other places. You see heavy oils like that coming out of Canada. You see them coming out of Southern California. But they are finite resources. And we, at this point in time, at least, still need those types of oils for some of these manufacturing processes we talked about because it needs to come from somewhere. But it’s more than a three-dimensional problem. It’s a 4D problem because there’s time involved in that. Yeah.

IRA FLATOW: So what are the biggest products you make out of this heavy oil?

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Yeah. The biggest ones are things like jet fuel and diesel. Paving is a big one, asphalt, yeah, asphalt. So you think about all the needs for that, both from a transportation, but also infrastructure standpoint. We need it.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. So a country, depending on what oil it has to export, might simultaneously be importing and exporting oil, so it gets the right kind of oil for the products it needs for the refineries it has.

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Exactly, yeah. That’s the thing with oil, is it doesn’t all go one direction. You’ve got imports coming one way, exports going another way. And a lot of that has to do with what’s the need and the capacity of refineries in those situations. So even the US is in a situation like that. We both import and export. Gross numbers overall, we are exporting now more. But when you look at the– drill down a little bit and look at the individual products, it’s kind of a give and take. Yeah.

IRA FLATOW: Very well stated there about drilling down and looking at it.

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Sorry, a little pun there.

IRA FLATOW: That’s OK. I’m sure there are a lot in the energy business, especially in the oil business. The president has talked about taking the Venezuelan oil so that he could drive down the price of gasoline. But what I’m hearing from you is that the Venezuelan oil is not the kind of oil you would use to make gasoline.

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: You’re correct there. Yeah. There would have to be some additional processes to eventually get to the gasoline. So it could very likely drive down some of the prices of the products that come out of this. So if I was driving a diesel truck, I might be a little kind of excited about that. Gasoline, a little bit of a difference there, yeah.

IRA FLATOW: Is there anything that you as an oil professional and an engineer have your eye on with regard to the Venezuelan oil situation?

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: Yeah, I think so because the industry is– it’s a worldwide industry. And country borders are country borders. But the industry is driven by different drivers. And economics is a big one. Oil price drives where people are going to put capital investment. And there’s only so much capital investment. So yeah, I think the oil industry in general is kind of curious about Venezuela.

But to your point earlier, there’s going to need to be a lot of capital startup and a lot of concern about what the long-term prospects might be in that area. So if I’m a company, I might be more willing to spend my money someplace else that might be perceived as a little bit less risky. So yeah, there’s a lot of moving parts on this. And I think a lot of people are just taking a step back and wait and see a little bit.

IRA FLATOW: Well, Dr. Miskimins, you’ve been a great teacher on the ABCs of oil production and refining for us today. I want to thank you very much for taking the time to be with us today.

JENNIFER MISKIMINS: It’s been my pleasure. Thanks for having me and for the interest in the topic.

IRA FLATOW: You’re welcome. Dr. Jennifer Miskimins is the President of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and Head of the Petroleum Engineering Department at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. This episode was produced by Charles Bergquist. And if you have a question you want us to drill into, give us a call. The listener line is always open, 877-4-SCIFRI. Thanks for listening. I’m Ira Flatow.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Copyright © 2026 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday’s programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/