Shares of the U.S. oil majors, including Chevron and ExxonMobil, jumped in premarket trading on Monday following the U.S. operation in Venezuela and the capture of Nicolas Maduro.
Chevron shares soared as much as 8% at 10:30 a.m. GMT, while Exxon was up around 4%.
Refiners Phillips 66, Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy and PBF Energy were up between 5% and 16%.
The moves come after the U.S. conducted a major military operation in Venezuela over the weekend, capturing Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in an intervention coming just after the New Year and sending shockwaves worldwide.
Hours after the operation, U.S. President Donald Trump said he wants American oil companies to return to Venezuela to tap its vast crude reserves.
"We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies – the biggest anywhere in the world – go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure," Trump said in a news conference from his Mar-a-Lago residence on Saturday.
Venezuela has the largest proven reserves in the world, with 303.221 billion barrels, according to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), of which it is a member. That puts it ahead of Saudi Arabia (267.200 billion) and Iran. The country is also one of the five nations that founded OPEC in 1960.
Venezuela was producing as much as 3.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in the 1970s, accounting for more than 7% of global output, according to Reuters.
Production slid below 2 million bpd in the 2010s and averaged about 1.1 million bpd last year, or roughly 1% of global supply, after years of underinvestment and sanctions.
Venezuelan crude is a heavy sour with high sulfur content, making it suitable for producing diesel and heavier fuels, albeit at lower margins compared with other grades, particularly those from the Middle East.
"This type of crude aligns well with the configuration of U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, which were historically designed to process such grades," said Ahmad Assiri, research strategist at Pepperstone.
Chevron's existing presence in Venezuela under a U.S. waiver has positioned it as a potential early beneficiary of any policy shift, while refiners stand to gain from increased availability of heavy crude closer to home.
A former top Chevron executive, Ali Moshiri, meanwhile, is said to be raising $2 billion for Venezuelan oil projects after Trump said Washington would take control of the oil-producing nation, the Financial Times reported on Monday.
Moshiri's investment fund, Amos Global Energy Management, has identified multiple Venezuelan assets and was talking to institutional investors about a private placement to kick-start investment, he told the newspaper.
"I've had a dozen calls over the past 24 hours from potential investors. Interest in Venezuela has gone from zero to 99 percent," Moshiri told the FT.
Still, analysts cautioned that any meaningful recovery in Venezuelan oil production would likely take time, given political uncertainty, infrastructure decay and years of underinvestment.
Oil prices were last seen slightly lower on Monday morning, while precious metals gained in response to the operation.
