By Nikhil Dedha, New Delhi, January 5
The ongoing crisis involving Venezuela is unlikely to have a significant impact on global prices of gold, silver and crude oil, as the country has already been under sanctions for several years and plays a limited role in formal global supply chains, experts said while reacting to the recent US-Venezuela developments.
Ajay Bagga, banking and market expert, told ANI that Venezuela's economic relevance to the global system has reduced sharply over the past decade due to prolonged sanctions.
He said, "Infact, Venezuela's GDP has fallen from USD 350 bn in 2012 to USD 80 bn in 2025 as a result of sanctions. In a USD 116 trillion world economy, this is not a material number at all. On Oil, despite its huge reserves, the oil infrastructure has deteriorated, and only Chevron is operating some oil fields apart from the state-owned oil producer. As such, even a total loss of the 950k barrels per day of Venezuelan production is not material in a 103 million b.d. global supply chain".
Even if Venezuela were to completely lose its current production of about 950,000 barrels per day, Bagga said the impact would be negligible in a global oil market that produces around 103 million barrels per day.
Commenting on precious metals, Bagga said the recent movement in gold and silver prices is more linked to safe-haven buying rather than Venezuela-specific factors. He added that similar safe-haven demand is also visible in the US dollar, which has strengthened.
He said, "Regarding gold and silver, the reaction is more a safe haven buying as is happening for the US dollar, which is up today. As such, Venezuela itself is not a large-scale determinant of the rise of gold and silver today, the fundamental issues of last year are at play".
Energy policy expert Narendra Taneja also told ANI that Venezuela is not likely to cause any immediate disruption to global oil prices. He noted that most refineries around the world are not designed to process Venezuelan crude, which is heavy oil.
He said, "I don't really see any immediate impact on the price of oil. Because Venezuela may have the larger reserves of oil, but they are a very small player in terms of supplying oil to the global system. They produce hardly 9 lakh barrels of oil per day. Bulk of that is exported and goes to China. America is now moving in, American companies moving in. Chances are that probably Venezuela will start producing 3 million barrels of oil every day within next one year, which means that oil will start flowing into the global supply system, which is not a bad news".
Overall, experts believe the Venezuela crisis is unlikely to create major shocks for oil or precious metals markets in the near term.
In a major military operation over the weekend of January 3-4, 2026, the United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, after a large-scale strike in Caracas. This action followed after months of escalating tension between US and Venezuela.
President Donald Trump said on Saturday that no nation in the world could achieve what America has achieved.
Trump, who addressed a press conference from Palm Beach, Florida, said the United States will run the country "until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition".
- ANI
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