This is an excellent article. Thank you for producing it. I've been trying to learn about US oil production and trade recently and that effort leaves me with questions. I'm curious as to why US refineries were built to handle heavy crude. Was that the type of oil that the US produced through "normal" drilling (starting in the mid-to-late 19th century)? Your article notes that the shale oil we produce is lighter in quality than our refineries are able to handle without additional (and presumably costly) processing. So we export that. Apparently our refineries are able to handle oil like that produced in the Orinoco Belt better than that we now produce. Why is that so? We have been producing shale oil for decades by now. Why haven't we upgraded our refinery infrastructure. It's not as if oil companies are not making money. Could this be an effect of the financialization of much of American life?
As for our current intervention in Venezuela, I think the timing is intended to distract the public from the ongoing administration efforts to delay and minimize their mishandling of the Epstein files and the effects of the Jack Smith testimony. The overall basis is to reward the oil dinosaurs for their support of the administration and to further delay and obstruct the inevitable transition to non-fossil energy. I'm sure that's been in planning for quite a while. But as you note at the beginning, that surety is often something that survives the appearance of other facts (not "alternative facts," thank you)
Great piece! I spent 6 1/2 years dispatching crude oil trucks in the Bakken oil fields of ND, so your oil facts are spot on. American refineries were built back when heavy crude from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc, were the only game in town. Once fracking became a thing that opened up huge reserves of domestic oil that were unobtainable before. And that oil was extremely light and sweet. Meaning low in sulphur and low specific gravity. Some Bakken oil I've seen looks like diesel fuel.
Oil companies were not interested in spending millions to retrofit refineries to run light sweet crude from the Bakken or Permian Basin fields when they could export it instead after the export ban was lifted in 2015.
The oil companies we hauled for made a lot of money hauling heavy sour oil from Manitoba and Saskatchewan to ND & MT and blending it with Bakken oil before sending it down the pipeline. That heavy crude sold at a deep discount, so by blending it they could sell it at Bakken prices.
If you scroll down about halfway through the post, there's a great cost breakdown on what it would take for American oil companies to take over Venezuelan oil.
Thanks yet again, John. I hadn't got around to reading that one yet. I saw information similar to that in another Substack. The Chavismos have ruined the Venezuelan oil infrastructure so badly that it's going to take something like ten years and $10B just to get the oil flowing again, before any money is to be made. It's ridiculous. Trump ain't gonna be around that long and Trumpism will follow him. No one in America is going to want to continue to pay that kind of money for the benefit of the oligarchs. And Trump's enablers, including the oil dinosaurs, are going to pay a hefty political price for their greed and short-sightedness. They think they're playing the long game, but the game is playing out longer than and differently from their vision.
As far as I know, until fracking opened up shale oil, all domestic oil was heavy crude. Heavy is refinable, it just takes a different process than light sweet crude.
Thanks again! As is painfully obvious, I didn't know that. My guess is that the refinery processes for the oil types are sufficiently different as to make it more profitable (less expensive) to import heavy crude and export light/sweet. Recent global events should put the supply chain under the microscope. Oil ain't going away any time soon.
"We do not need less of this kind of work. We need more. Deeper, more often, with better edits, stronger sourcing, and fewer unforced errors. And yes, I need help to scale upward, even if the first hire is the most obvious one in my house. Proofreading, fact checks, cleanup, the kind of quiet labor that makes the truth feel trustworthy."
Only too true, and worth paying for. More effort to read as well. And yes, we need reading to be deeper, more often, with better attention , stronger evaluation, and fewer unforced errors; and I am not always in the mood. Screens, especially the top-down kind, seem to make us lazy(er), or more easily allow it. How else could we (the People) have ended up with leadership that compares unfavorably with King George III?
Earth has been called the "Goldilocks Planet" because so many, many things are "just right", not just the wish-list to brew and sustain life, but the confluence, the exact right sort of interactions that allow for our existence. Linear scales are fine for the temperature of porridge, but comprehension, (like in the word "prehensile", "to grasp") more complex realities requires (I believe) thinking in 3D and 4D. It is tempting and often useful to look for "the one" cause, or primary cause of circumstances, and certainly some explanations identify a "root" cause better than others, which makes them powerful. The "germ theory" of infectious disease for example, but life is not always simple, and where a confluence of dependencies create complicated circumstances, the desired result may be depressingly hard to achieve, or oppressive ones hard to get rid of. Like Trumps simplistic wonder cures such as tariffs, neglecting the whole in place to affect that system to deliver beneficial, sustainable and just results. A bomb can change things very quickly, but it can't build a civilization.
Constitutional Democracy, with liberty and justice for all, comes with a steep price that must be shared by the preponderance of its beneficiaries. I assume that is a major reason why, with all we know in the present day and around the globe, tyranny remains so popular. It's a whole lot less work, but you get what you pay for, and often get less.
That said, I think it generally furthers to "follow the money".
Ok……On Project 2025, I’m still reading it, so I’m not going to front like I’ve got the whole thing solved. But I have noticed Venezuela isn’t treated like a random sidebar. It’s named inside a “Western Hemisphere” frame that talks about a “hemisphere-centered approach to industry and energy,” “re-hemisphering” manufacturing, and a hemisphere-focused energy policy, plus a security section that explicitly lists Venezuela as a problem node or vulnerability point.
My instinct is that this is less “one country” policy and more a technocratic management vision that wants the entire continent to function like one coordinated system using energy, migration, security, and supply chains under one playbook. I want to reread the Venezuela passages carefully and quote them clean before I go any harder than that.
Now on this being Vietnam, my opinion is this ain’t that. Vietnam was a self-feeding quagmire, mission creep dressed up as destiny. This looked calculated and surgical precisely because a real strategic objective would be to keep the oil infrastructure intact, not turn it into rubble. The danger isn’t that it starts as Vietnam, it’s that “stabilization” becomes the new word for staying.
Jim Stewartson at Mind War (here in Substack) addresses your "one coordinated system" comment in discussing "technates." He seems solid and might be worth your checking out. Thank you, again, X.
Trump says the US is going to "run" Venezuela, but he doesn't have a clue what that entails, since he doesn't "run" anything himself other than in name. I think the folks behind the curtain who are manipulating him are smarter than to have the US get stuck in Venezuela. They'll just do what they want and get out. Now if we have to put boots on the ground to defend the investments that our oil dinosaurs want to put in place in Venezuela, that's another story.
“Anybody who tells you they already have the whole answer and it wraps up neatly as a conspiracy is usually advertising they haven’t done the homework.”
Usually … meaning almost always … meaning not always.
Freedom and the pursuit of happiness is incredibly simple and incredibly complex. Get the simple part right and the complex part is possible. Get the simple part wrong and the complex part is impossible.
The simple part is comprised of two concepts any fifth grader can understand. First, take the time to observe carefully because there’s more to the book than its cover (as you’ve stated). Second, subject assumptions to rigorous skepticism until the inconvenient truth has an advantage over the convenient falsehood.
Our prehistoric ancestors did that simple part and became the dominant vertebrate species on the planet. Our historic ancestors did that simple part and founded the world’s great religions, democracy, justice, science, capitalism, and America. Then someone in a position of power ignores an inconvenient truth to take advantage of a convenient falsehood, and too many people assume that’s how they also need to play the game.
I’m not saying to ignore the symptoms. I’m saying treat the symptoms, but don’t ignore the possibility that the disease is curable. Worst-case scenario, at lease we’d know our pessimism didn’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Best-case scenario, the disease is cured and the symptoms disappear.
I read your breakdown as the material counterpart to an information‑warfare analysis: you’re following barrels and balance sheets; I followed memes and ‘law enforcement’ language. Both routes arrive at the same place: methods, not slogans, are where the real politics live.
If the dollar now rests on ‘state power and economic capacity’ instead of gold, as you lay out, then perception of that power becomes part of the reserve backing. Perhaps this is where meme‑ified perp walks and ‘FAFO’ posts aren’t just tasteless; they’re a form of soft capital maintenance.
May i ask for your thoughts? And I may shamelessly plug my article I wrote about this, which reflects the points I brought up.
Of course I love the logic here. It takes a step beyond what Chevron wants, what Halliburton wants and what Putin wants. Though those might in fact be the more immediate causes and this deep research does the spinners' work for them.
At the same time, I'd like to ask what the desire for Petrodollar 'stability' has to do with speculative cryptocurrencies, the gobbling of mountains of gold by oil-connected capitalists, and the la-la-land of those who make a killing on corporate mergers, Futures markets, private equity juggling and other forms of unproductive concentration of exchangeables. And how the world is sailing into renewables while the US sinks into the tar.
Dude X, you're awesome. And I was just bragging to the wife about you. Thank you for this hugely informative (albeit with some necessary conjecture) article.
Outstanding work here. The refiney chemistry angle is what mostpeople miss when they argue petrodollar conspiracy - I dunno why nobody talks about the Gulf Coast infrastructure lock-in with heavy crude. I never thought about how refinery specs could matter as much as currency settlement, but that Orinoco mismatch makes the whole intervention logic way less abstract.
This is an excellent article. Thank you for producing it. I've been trying to learn about US oil production and trade recently and that effort leaves me with questions. I'm curious as to why US refineries were built to handle heavy crude. Was that the type of oil that the US produced through "normal" drilling (starting in the mid-to-late 19th century)? Your article notes that the shale oil we produce is lighter in quality than our refineries are able to handle without additional (and presumably costly) processing. So we export that. Apparently our refineries are able to handle oil like that produced in the Orinoco Belt better than that we now produce. Why is that so? We have been producing shale oil for decades by now. Why haven't we upgraded our refinery infrastructure. It's not as if oil companies are not making money. Could this be an effect of the financialization of much of American life?
As for our current intervention in Venezuela, I think the timing is intended to distract the public from the ongoing administration efforts to delay and minimize their mishandling of the Epstein files and the effects of the Jack Smith testimony. The overall basis is to reward the oil dinosaurs for their support of the administration and to further delay and obstruct the inevitable transition to non-fossil energy. I'm sure that's been in planning for quite a while. But as you note at the beginning, that surety is often something that survives the appearance of other facts (not "alternative facts," thank you)
See my comment on oil below to answer your refinery questions.
Some interactive relationship maps to follow the petro dollars.
Blood, barrels and billions for MAGA donors from Trump's oil raid: Follow the money
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/01/05/trump-venezuela-oil-raid-maga-donors/
Petro-Politics: How Campaign Cash Fueled Trump’s Invasion of Venezuela
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/01/04/petro-politics-trump-venezuela-invasion-oil/
Mapping the jungles of Venezuela where Americans will die in Trump’s grift for oil
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/01/03/trump-invades-venezuela-for-oil/
What happened when America invaded Iraq for its oil?
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/01/03/venezuela-maduro-kidnap-trump-iraq-invasion-lesson/
Americans go hungry as Trump spends millions to invade Venezuela: Mapping the trade off
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/01/03/venezuela-us-military-strikes-maduro-trump-hunger-tradeoff
The most important thing about this illegal kidnapping is, RELEASE THE FUCKING TRUMP-EPSTEIN FILES!
Great piece! I spent 6 1/2 years dispatching crude oil trucks in the Bakken oil fields of ND, so your oil facts are spot on. American refineries were built back when heavy crude from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc, were the only game in town. Once fracking became a thing that opened up huge reserves of domestic oil that were unobtainable before. And that oil was extremely light and sweet. Meaning low in sulphur and low specific gravity. Some Bakken oil I've seen looks like diesel fuel.
Oil companies were not interested in spending millions to retrofit refineries to run light sweet crude from the Bakken or Permian Basin fields when they could export it instead after the export ban was lifted in 2015.
The oil companies we hauled for made a lot of money hauling heavy sour oil from Manitoba and Saskatchewan to ND & MT and blending it with Bakken oil before sending it down the pipeline. That heavy crude sold at a deep discount, so by blending it they could sell it at Bakken prices.
Thank you, Mr. Schwarzkopf. This explains a lot. I wonder what our original oil (Pennsylvania/Texas-Spindletop) was like. How did we refine it?
If you scroll down about halfway through the post, there's a great cost breakdown on what it would take for American oil companies to take over Venezuelan oil.
https://open.substack.com/pub/meidastouch/p/today-in-politics-bulletin-280-1526?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&shareImageVariant=overlay&r=1wbr1r
Thanks yet again, John. I hadn't got around to reading that one yet. I saw information similar to that in another Substack. The Chavismos have ruined the Venezuelan oil infrastructure so badly that it's going to take something like ten years and $10B just to get the oil flowing again, before any money is to be made. It's ridiculous. Trump ain't gonna be around that long and Trumpism will follow him. No one in America is going to want to continue to pay that kind of money for the benefit of the oligarchs. And Trump's enablers, including the oil dinosaurs, are going to pay a hefty political price for their greed and short-sightedness. They think they're playing the long game, but the game is playing out longer than and differently from their vision.
As far as I know, until fracking opened up shale oil, all domestic oil was heavy crude. Heavy is refinable, it just takes a different process than light sweet crude.
Thanks again! As is painfully obvious, I didn't know that. My guess is that the refinery processes for the oil types are sufficiently different as to make it more profitable (less expensive) to import heavy crude and export light/sweet. Recent global events should put the supply chain under the microscope. Oil ain't going away any time soon.
"We do not need less of this kind of work. We need more. Deeper, more often, with better edits, stronger sourcing, and fewer unforced errors. And yes, I need help to scale upward, even if the first hire is the most obvious one in my house. Proofreading, fact checks, cleanup, the kind of quiet labor that makes the truth feel trustworthy."
Only too true, and worth paying for. More effort to read as well. And yes, we need reading to be deeper, more often, with better attention , stronger evaluation, and fewer unforced errors; and I am not always in the mood. Screens, especially the top-down kind, seem to make us lazy(er), or more easily allow it. How else could we (the People) have ended up with leadership that compares unfavorably with King George III?
Earth has been called the "Goldilocks Planet" because so many, many things are "just right", not just the wish-list to brew and sustain life, but the confluence, the exact right sort of interactions that allow for our existence. Linear scales are fine for the temperature of porridge, but comprehension, (like in the word "prehensile", "to grasp") more complex realities requires (I believe) thinking in 3D and 4D. It is tempting and often useful to look for "the one" cause, or primary cause of circumstances, and certainly some explanations identify a "root" cause better than others, which makes them powerful. The "germ theory" of infectious disease for example, but life is not always simple, and where a confluence of dependencies create complicated circumstances, the desired result may be depressingly hard to achieve, or oppressive ones hard to get rid of. Like Trumps simplistic wonder cures such as tariffs, neglecting the whole in place to affect that system to deliver beneficial, sustainable and just results. A bomb can change things very quickly, but it can't build a civilization.
Constitutional Democracy, with liberty and justice for all, comes with a steep price that must be shared by the preponderance of its beneficiaries. I assume that is a major reason why, with all we know in the present day and around the globe, tyranny remains so popular. It's a whole lot less work, but you get what you pay for, and often get less.
That said, I think it generally furthers to "follow the money".
Xplisset: What are your thoughts about Venezuela being prominently mentioned in Project 2025?
Btw: I'm having thoughts about Venezuela becoming another Vietnam.
Ok……On Project 2025, I’m still reading it, so I’m not going to front like I’ve got the whole thing solved. But I have noticed Venezuela isn’t treated like a random sidebar. It’s named inside a “Western Hemisphere” frame that talks about a “hemisphere-centered approach to industry and energy,” “re-hemisphering” manufacturing, and a hemisphere-focused energy policy, plus a security section that explicitly lists Venezuela as a problem node or vulnerability point.
My instinct is that this is less “one country” policy and more a technocratic management vision that wants the entire continent to function like one coordinated system using energy, migration, security, and supply chains under one playbook. I want to reread the Venezuela passages carefully and quote them clean before I go any harder than that.
Now on this being Vietnam, my opinion is this ain’t that. Vietnam was a self-feeding quagmire, mission creep dressed up as destiny. This looked calculated and surgical precisely because a real strategic objective would be to keep the oil infrastructure intact, not turn it into rubble. The danger isn’t that it starts as Vietnam, it’s that “stabilization” becomes the new word for staying.
Jim Stewartson at Mind War (here in Substack) addresses your "one coordinated system" comment in discussing "technates." He seems solid and might be worth your checking out. Thank you, again, X.
Thank you for your explanation. I appreciate it.
Trump says the US is going to "run" Venezuela, but he doesn't have a clue what that entails, since he doesn't "run" anything himself other than in name. I think the folks behind the curtain who are manipulating him are smarter than to have the US get stuck in Venezuela. They'll just do what they want and get out. Now if we have to put boots on the ground to defend the investments that our oil dinosaurs want to put in place in Venezuela, that's another story.
“Anybody who tells you they already have the whole answer and it wraps up neatly as a conspiracy is usually advertising they haven’t done the homework.”
Usually … meaning almost always … meaning not always.
Freedom and the pursuit of happiness is incredibly simple and incredibly complex. Get the simple part right and the complex part is possible. Get the simple part wrong and the complex part is impossible.
The simple part is comprised of two concepts any fifth grader can understand. First, take the time to observe carefully because there’s more to the book than its cover (as you’ve stated). Second, subject assumptions to rigorous skepticism until the inconvenient truth has an advantage over the convenient falsehood.
Our prehistoric ancestors did that simple part and became the dominant vertebrate species on the planet. Our historic ancestors did that simple part and founded the world’s great religions, democracy, justice, science, capitalism, and America. Then someone in a position of power ignores an inconvenient truth to take advantage of a convenient falsehood, and too many people assume that’s how they also need to play the game.
I’m not saying to ignore the symptoms. I’m saying treat the symptoms, but don’t ignore the possibility that the disease is curable. Worst-case scenario, at lease we’d know our pessimism didn’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Best-case scenario, the disease is cured and the symptoms disappear.
I read your breakdown as the material counterpart to an information‑warfare analysis: you’re following barrels and balance sheets; I followed memes and ‘law enforcement’ language. Both routes arrive at the same place: methods, not slogans, are where the real politics live.
If the dollar now rests on ‘state power and economic capacity’ instead of gold, as you lay out, then perception of that power becomes part of the reserve backing. Perhaps this is where meme‑ified perp walks and ‘FAFO’ posts aren’t just tasteless; they’re a form of soft capital maintenance.
May i ask for your thoughts? And I may shamelessly plug my article I wrote about this, which reflects the points I brought up.
https://thedisinformationobserver.substack.com/p/whats-not-being-said-about-the-maduro
Distraction from the Epstein files.
Bingo.
Of course I love the logic here. It takes a step beyond what Chevron wants, what Halliburton wants and what Putin wants. Though those might in fact be the more immediate causes and this deep research does the spinners' work for them.
At the same time, I'd like to ask what the desire for Petrodollar 'stability' has to do with speculative cryptocurrencies, the gobbling of mountains of gold by oil-connected capitalists, and the la-la-land of those who make a killing on corporate mergers, Futures markets, private equity juggling and other forms of unproductive concentration of exchangeables. And how the world is sailing into renewables while the US sinks into the tar.
Dude X, you're awesome. And I was just bragging to the wife about you. Thank you for this hugely informative (albeit with some necessary conjecture) article.
Outstanding work here. The refiney chemistry angle is what mostpeople miss when they argue petrodollar conspiracy - I dunno why nobody talks about the Gulf Coast infrastructure lock-in with heavy crude. I never thought about how refinery specs could matter as much as currency settlement, but that Orinoco mismatch makes the whole intervention logic way less abstract.
Because I like the richer taste of Maduro puros!