January 23, 2026
REsurety policy experts weigh in.
We’ve been monitoring the 2026 Venezuela intervention closely to understand its impact on domestic natural gas markets.
Why?
Because the price of crude oil ripples through the entire energy complex, ultimately dictating the financial health of renewable energy contracts.
Let us take a moment to explain.
Global oil production has an indirect yet significant influence on gas availability—specifically through “associated gas” produced in U.S. oil fields. A natural byproduct of drilling for oil is natural gas – It’s a “package deal”—you can’t extract the oil without releasing the gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), this byproduct now accounts for approximately 40% of total U.S. natural gas production.
This vast supply of low-cost associated gas serves as the primary fuel source for the thermal plants that set the market-clearing price for power. Because electricity prices are so tightly coupled to these fuel costs, any fluctuation in the natural gas market—driven by global oil trends—becomes a primary driver of long-term power price forecasts, including WeatherSmart forecasts like REsurety’s.
How the ramp up of oil production takes place in Venezuela will make a difference for the future of the clean energy market by shifting the economics of producing, selling, or buying PPAs.
While change is coming, it’s not arriving overnight. According to recent analysis from Rystad Energy (January 2026), returning Venezuela to its peak production of 3 million barrels per day would require a staggering $183 billion in investment and would not be fully realized until 2040.
REsurety has created three scenarios about future energy prices in the new world order, what this means for clean energy, and trigger moments to watch for along the way – read on to learn more.
A blip in long-term prices, or a market shift?
The current plan to release 30–50 million barrels of seized oil provides a cyclical impact. Cyclical changes are temporary price swings driven by immediate supply-demand imbalances or short-term geopolitical events. These movements are mean-reverting, eventually returning to a historical baseline once the disruption passes. This temporary inventory flush (roughly two days of U.S. consumption) may dampen prices for a few weeks but does not alter long-term capacity.
While the release of seized oil may have a cyclical impact, there are more system-altering forces at play. The broader developments in Venezuela represent a fundamental structural shift in the energy landscape.
Structural changes represent fundamental shifts in the market’s underlying framework. For example, the rapid scaling of grid-scale storage has permanently changed how the grid manages peak demand, establishing a “new normal” from which the market does not return.
In the case of Venezuela, this is a long-term strategy to establish a lower global price floor. We have identified three potential scenarios through which this transition may reshape natural gas benchmarks and, consequently, downstream PPA capture rates – or revenue earned from PPAs.
The most likely of the scenarios is “Crude-Driven Supply Contraction,” which is the best case scenario for the clean energy PPA market. In this scenario, Venezuela’s oil industry internationalizes — driving down oil prices and in so doing, inadvertently drives the price of natural gas up as the U.S. cuts back on drilling. Clean energy sources look even better in comparison, and investment into clean energy should follow. On the other hand, a world in which the U.S. reacts to Venezuela oil production with its own ramp up in production could be difficult for clean energy: with energy prices at a low, the business case for investment in clean energy — or any energy source — may look less favorable.
Source: REsurety analysis.
REsurety’s Power Markets team, led by Mark O’Brien, is following this topic closely. Reach out to learn more about the impacts on your business.