‘Everybody loses’ if production supercharged in country with largest known oil reserves, critics say

Donald Trump, by dramatically seizing Nicolás Maduro and claiming dominion over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, has taken his “drill, baby, drill” mantra global. Achieving the president’s dream of supercharging the country’s oil production would be financially challenging – and if fulfilled, would be “terrible for the climate”, experts say.

Trump has aggressively sought to boost oil and gas production within the US. Now, after the capture and arrest of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, he is seeking to orchestrate a ramp-up of drilling in Venezuela, which has the largest known reserves of oil in the world – equivalent to about 300bn barrels, according to research firm the Energy Institute.