Oil prices were largely flat during Monday’s Asian trading after the United States’ strike on Venezuela while OPEC+ agreed to maintain production at current levels in 2026’s first quarter.
Brent crude prices were stable at US$60.73 per barrel by 2:40 pm AEDT while West Texas Intermediate was down 0.2% to $57.23.
The U.S. launched an attack on Venezuela on Saturday, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, who will stand trial in New York on drug trafficking and weapons-related charges.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez is now the country’s acting president.
While U.S. President Donald Trump initially claimed the U.S. would “run” Venezuela, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since said it will instead exert pressure through its ongoing blockade of sanctioned oil tankers.
Trump also said U.S. oil majors would invest heavily in modernising Venezuela’s oil industry, though none have publicly said they will do so.
“We see ambiguous but modest risks to oil prices in the short-run from Venezuela depending on how U.S. sanctions policy evolves,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrote today. “Any recovery in production would likely be gradual and require substantial investment.”
Venezuela’s oil infrastructure was not impacted by the U.S. strikes. Its production in 2026 will likely remain flat at 900,000 barrels per day, wrote Goldman Sachs.
Eight OPEC+ countries said they would keep oil production steady in 2026’s first quarter.
The eight country bloc initially said in November it would pause previously planned output hikes in February and March “due to seasonality”.
Oil prices dropped by more than 18% last year, their largest annual fall since 2020. OPEC+ had hiked output by around 2.9 million barrels per day across 2025.
