The U.S. ouster and capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is likely to put added pressure on oil prices when markets reopen Sunday night, with implications for broader financial and commodity markets, including grain and soy complex futures.
The U.S. captured Maduro and his wife in a military operation carried out in coordination with law enforcement, President Donald Trump said Saturday. Maduro and his wife are being transferred to New York where they will face narco-terrorism charges, he said.
The move comes after months of rising tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela, whose 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves are the largest in the world, representing around 17% of global supply. It carries significant implications for an oil market that has already been under pressure due to a rising supply glut.
‘We’re in the oil business’
Venezuela’s output has suffered as a result of a lack of investment, while sanctions have curtailed its export capacity. Trump told reporters that U.S. oil companies will invest heavily in improving infrastructure and will be reimbursed by proceeds from increased petroleum sales. Trump said the U.S. would run Venezuela until a leadership transition was put in place.
“We’re in the oil business,” Trump said. “In other words, we’ll be selling oil probably in much larger doses because [Venezuela] couldn’t produce very much because their infrastructure was so bad. So we’ll be selling large amounts of oil to other countries, many of whom are using it now but I would say many more will come.”
The rebuilding of Venezuela oil infrastructure will be a “major event,” Phil Flynn, analyst at The Price Futures Group, told Pro Farmer. All else being equal, the event will further erode the geopolitical risk premium in the crude market, while falling oil prices will put added pressure on Russia, he said, as efforts continue to broker an end to the country’s war with Ukraine. At the same time, adding Venezuelan barrels to the market won’t be
Venezuela produced as much as 3.5 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude in the 1970s, or around 7% of global output, but saw production fall below 2 million bpd in the 2010s. Last year it averaged just 1.1 million bpd in 2025, or just 1% of global production, according to Reuters.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, fell 20% in 2025, while Brent crude, the global benchmark, saw an annual decline of 18%. It was the biggest yearly drop for both grades since 2020, according to Dow Jones Newswires. February WTI futures fell 10 cents Friday, or 0.2%, to close at $57.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Oil down, gold up?
“If markets were open today, which they are not, we would have probably seen an immediate decoupling of oil prices (lower on the prospect of increased Venezuelan exports, depending on the leadership succession there) from gold (higher due to safe haven flows amid heightened uncertainty),” wrote Mohamed El-Erian, advisor to Allianz and the former CEO of bond-trading giant Pimco, in a post on X.
Weaker oil prices can be a boon to farmers in terms of lower fuel and other input costs, but they also tend to be a weight on corn and soybean prices due to pressure on demand for ethanol and biodiesel.
Watch the dollar
The near-term reaction in the grain and oilseed markets may also depend on the behavior of the broader financial markets, particularly whether global investors shed assets perceived as risky and rush into traditional havens, including the U.S. dollar and Treasuries.
It’s less clear how those assets would be reacting if markets were open Saturday, El-Erian said.
A stronger dollar can be a negative for commodities priced in the currency, making them more expensive to users of other commodities. A selloff across assets perceived as risky, including stocks, can also encompass agricultural commodities.
However, negative reactions to geopolitical events are often short-lived. And there’s also the possibility global investors view the incident as reducing geopolitical risks after months of rising tensions around Venezuela. Cryptocurrency markets, which do trade around the clock, seven days a week, were firmer on Saturday, potentially signaling traders outside the oil complex are prepared to take the events in stride.