From Oil to Innovation: How Venezuela and Its People Have Strengthened the United States

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When public debate narrows the U.S.–Venezuela relationship to crisis headlines, we risk forgetting a deeper story—one woven through wartime energy, hemispheric development, scientific exchange, and a highly educated immigrant diaspora. From supplying crucial oil to the Allied war effort to partnering on economic modernization in the 1960s, and from fueling American refineries to advancing research and entrepreneurship, Venezuela and Venezuelans have repeatedly helped power the United States. This feature traces that legacy and explains why it still matters for the future.

Oil That Helped Win a War (and Rebuild a Continent)

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Venezuela was the world’s leading oil exporter and the third-largest producer after the United States and the Soviet Union. With an output of over 563,000 barrels per day, its crude became indispensable to the Allied campaign—a strategic lifeline for tanks, ships, and aircraft in the fight against fascism. As the American Association of Petroleum Geologists has noted, “Venezuela…played a crucial part in supplying the energy requirements of the Allies,” earning recognition as a secure and reliable supplier to world markets during the war and beyond. [independent.co.uk]

That partnership wasn’t incidental. The wartime U.S. government reorganized around petroleum diplomacy to secure stable access to Venezuelan oil, coordinating with private oil firms while managing Allied logistics. Archival research shows Washington even created a State Department office dedicated to oil issues during WWII—evidence of how central Venezuelan reserves were to American strategy. British and U.S. officials, facing disrupted Middle Eastern routes, regarded Venezuelan crude as vital to sustaining operations, and worked with companies to safeguard supply despite Caracas pushing for fairer taxation and more local refining—a reminder that cooperation often coexisted with negotiation and reform in Venezuela’s oil sector. [politico.com] [thehill.com]

Venezuela’s role extended after 1945. As Europe staggered into recovery, Venezuelan production continued rising, supporting the Marshall Plan’s broader energy needs. The wartime alliance matured into a postwar trade relationship that shaped refinery configurations on the U.S. Gulf Coast, where facilities were optimized to process heavy, sour crude—exactly the slates Venezuela produces at scale. [independent.co.uk]

Anecdote: In 1944, Venezuelan President Isaías Medina Angarita visited the U.S., laying a floral offering at a statue of Simón Bolívar in New York—a symbolic homage to hemispheric solidarity in wartime. Diplomatic records from the period highlight how Venezuela balanced neutrality with covert Allied support before formally declaring war on the Axis in February 1945, underscoring its strategic alignment when it mattered most. [usatoday.com]

The Kennedy Years: Development, Democracy, and the “Alliance for Progress”

The partnership deepened in the early 1960s through President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, a sweeping initiative for economic growth and democratic governance across Latin America. In December 1961, Kennedy and Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt met in Caracas and issued a Joint Statement reaffirming “the irrevocable friendship of the two peoples,” pledging to pursue land reform, housing, education, and industrial development—“far‑reaching efforts in the social field” alongside economic modernization. The statement recognized that commodity prices and importing-country practices must fairly reflect Latin America’s export dependence, a key concern for oil‑producing nations like Venezuela. [en.wikipedia.org]

Kennedy’s visit, captured in U.S. Information Service films, featured speeches at development projects and remarks by Jacqueline Kennedy in Spanish—powerful public diplomacy at a tense Cold War moment. The footage and archives show how Venezuela became a model for the Alliance’s vision, with planned investments in the Guri Hydroelectric Dam and Guayana region industrialization, linking energy infrastructure to social progress. [eia.gov]

To be sure, subsequent historical scholarship is clear-eyed: despite political support for Betancourt’s democratic government, U.S. policy occasionally hampered Venezuelan growth through import limits on Venezuelan oil, and aid flows tilted toward security rather than long-term development. Those frictions show that even close partners faced trade-offs between domestic policy and hemispheric strategy during the Latin American Cold War. Still, the broader record points to a period when Washington and Caracas collaborated to balance prosperity, democracy, and stability amid regional upheaval, and when Venezuela’s modernization was considered a hemispheric asset. [link.springer.com] [doaj.org]

A Century of Industry: How Venezuelan Oil Shaped U.S. Energy

The U.S.–Venezuela oil story stretches back to the 1920s, when discoveries in the Maracaibo Basin transformed Venezuela into a global producer. American majors—Standard Oil (later Exxon), Gulf, and others—participated alongside Royal Dutch Shell, forging supply chains that pulsed through U.S. refineries and distribution networks. By the 1943 Hydrocarbons Law, Venezuela asserted a 50/50 profit-sharing model, strengthening national oversight while keeping partnerships intact—an arrangement that influenced other petroleum states in later decades. [pnpi.org]

Over time, U.S. refiners engineered capacity to process heavy Venezuelan crude, and Gulf Coast economics came to rely on those barrels. Even after sanctions in 2019 froze direct flows, licenses allowing Chevron to resume limited operations in 2022–2023 reflected the mutual interest in maintaining technical ties, expertise exchange, and refinery optimization, with U.S. imports resuming under controlled conditions. The Energy Information Administration has documented the evolving sanction environment and the gradual reappearance of Venezuelan cargoes, illustrating how geopolitics and energy security intersect at the refinery gate. Industry analyses further note that returning Venezuelan crude helps U.S. plants designed for heavy feedstocks operate more efficiently, lowering blend costs and stabilizing product markets—one more reason this supply relationship has been resilient across political cycles.

Quote from the period: “Venezuela’s oil garnered intense interest from the Allies and the Axis,” historian Thomas M. Leonard observed about the war years, a reminder that global strategy often moves on the currents of energy. [usatoday.com]

Venezuelan Immigrants: A Highly Educated, Innovative Diaspora

If oil powered machines and markets, Venezuelans themselves have powered universities, laboratories, startups, and hospitals across the United States. Recent data show Venezuelan immigrants are among the most highly educated Latin American-origin groups in the country. As the Migration Policy Institute reports, roughly 770,000 Venezuelan immigrants lived in the U.S. by 2023, and hundreds of thousands have Temporary Protected Status that allows work authorization—critical for integrating skills into local economies. [newsweek.com]

The Pew Research Center has consistently found that Venezuelans arrive with exceptionally high rates of college completion. In comparative analyses of recent Latino immigrants (2018), 65% of Venezuelans aged 25+ held a bachelor’s degree or higher, far exceeding many origin groups and feeding directly into STEM, healthcare, and professional sectors that underpin U.S. growth and innovation. These education levels have reshaped occupational distributions, pushing the diaspora toward high-skill roles and away from low-skill jobs common among earlier waves from the region. [congress.gov]

Beyond degrees, immigrants contribute outsized entrepreneurship. Congressional analyses emphasize that immigrants launch new companies at twice the rate of native-born Americans, boosting jobs and wages—an evidence-based rebuttal to zero-sum labor myths. Venezuelan founders now appear in technology, food service, logistics, and creative industries, especially in hubs like Miami and Houston where oil expertise, bilingual talent, and hemispheric networks converge. [hir.harvard.edu], [pewresearch.org]

Anecdote: In interviews with Venezuelan migrants in Panama City on their way north, many described their hope to reapply professional skills—from teaching to engineering—once settled in the U.S., viewing education and work as the surest path to rebuild family stability and contribute to their host communities. [queensimmi...torney.com]

Research, Refining, and the Future of Energy

The energy relationship is evolving. Sanctions, mismanagement, and infrastructure decay in Venezuela have sharply reduced output since the late 2000s, but technical cooperation—through joint ventures, licensing, and specialized refining—still connects American expertise to Venezuelan reservoirs. Think tank analyses document how policy shifts (like Chevron’s license changes) ripple through U.S. refinery economics, while tariff or sanction regimes can constrain flows and complicate market planning. These levers matter: Gulf Coast plants tuned to heavy crude can’t simply swap in light grades without costly reconfiguration, so a politically durable pathway to Venezuelan supply remains in the national economic interest, even when diplomacy is arduous.

It’s also important to remember that Venezuela helped found OPEC in 1960, signaling a tradition of energy governance that sought predictable prices and investment. Contemporary appeals to OPEC and OPEC+—however controversial in the current geopolitical environment—underscore that Venezuela’s reserves (the world’s largest proven at ~303–304 billion barrels) will remain relevant to global energy systems for decades, whether the flows reach the U.S. directly or via third countries and blended cargos.

A Relationship Bigger Than Politics

None of this suggests the last quarter‑century of U.S.–Venezuela relations has been easy. Since 1999, tensions have mounted around ideology, sanctions, and human rights. But step back from the flashpoints, and you see a legacy of partnership whenever energy security, development, education, and innovation were at stake. That legacy lives on in U.S. refineries built for Venezuelan barrels, in immigrant classrooms and laboratories, and in diaspora entrepreneurship—a symbiosis that has benefited both countries.

As the United States debates migration and the future of energy, remembering this history isn’t nostalgia; it’s strategic clarity. Venezuela has been, and Venezuelans are, contributors—in war and recovery, in development and democracy, in industry and research. That truth should inform policy choices and public narratives alike.

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Selected Sources

World War II & Postwar Oil

• AAPG Explorer, “Venezuela’s Oil: Crucial in World War II” (2015) [independent.co.uk]

• DOAJ-indexed study, “U.S. Petroleum Diplomacy in Venezuela during World War II” (2025) [politico.com]

• SpringerLink chapter, Anglo-American Relations and Venezuelan Oil, 1939–1945 (2020) [thehill.com]

• “Venezuela during World War II” (summary; historical context) [usatoday.com]

Kennedy & Alliance for Progress

• American Presidency Project, “Joint Statement Following Discussions With the President of Venezuela” (Dec. 17, 1961) [en.wikipedia.org]

• JFK Library archives & USIS film on Kennedy’s Venezuela visit (1961) [eia.gov]

• FAU thesis, Forging the Alliance for Progress…Venezuela and the Bounty of Oil, 1957–1963 (2024) [link.springer.com]

Industry History & Sanctions

• EIA Country Analysis Brief: Venezuela (Feb. 8, 2024)

• Wikipedia overview of U.S. involvement in Venezuela’s petroleum industry (summary of early history; sanctions context) [pnpi.org]

• Industry commentary on Venezuelan crude’s return to U.S. markets (2025)

• Columbia SIPA CGEP analysis on U.S. oil tariffs & Chevron licenses (2025)

• Global Americans explainer on Venezuela’s reserves & sector dynamics (2023)

• Al Jazeera reporting on OPEC appeals and current tensions (Dec. 1, 2025)

Immigrant Contributions

• Migration Policy Institute, “Venezuelan Immigrants in the United States” (Feb. 6, 2025) [newsweek.com]

• Pew Research Center analysis of Latino immigrants’ educational attainment (with Venezuela’s 65% bachelor’s+ figure) (Apr. 7, 2020) [congress.gov]

• Joint Economic Committee (U.S. Congress), “Immigrants Are Vital to the U.S. Economy” (2021) & “Immigration Facts” (2024) [pewresearch.org], [hir.harvard.edu]