President Donald Trump asserts that US companies will now gain access to Venezuela’s extensive oil reserves. However, the administration has also focused on the nation’s other commodities. Experts indicate that Venezuela possesses unverified quantities of minerals, metals, and potentially rare earth elements. The significance of these raw materials spans various sectors, including defense and technology, with the administration consistently emphasizing their critical role in ensuring US national security. However, experts suggest that although Washington may aim to secure Venezuela’s essential resources, achieving this goal is a significant challenge and would likely have minimal impact on strengthening America’s supply chain. The quantity and economic viability of Venezuela’s mineral resources remain ambiguous. Companies encounter significant risks when engaging in mining activities in Venezuela, particularly in the absence of reliable security assurances.
Experts indicate that numerous regions are home to guerrilla soldiers and armed groups involved in illegal gold mining activities. The extraction of energy-intensive rare earths poses significant environmental risks. “There is an awareness within the administration that even beyond oil, there’s wider natural resource value in the country,” stated Reed Blakemore. “However, if we’re discussing the circumstances that enable us to harness those mineral resources and introduce them to the market, it presents a considerably more complex narrative,” Blakemore stated. “And even, frankly, more challenging than the narrative surrounding oil.” Even if US companies were to attempt to extract Venezuela’s rare earths, the extraction from the ground represents merely one component of the overall process. Typically, those materials are dispatched to China for the purpose of refining.
In 2024, China was responsible for more than 90% of the global refining of rare earths, as reported by the International Energy Agency. The nation holds a de facto monopoly in the processing and refining of materials, a situation attributable to years of government subsidies, industry growth, and lenient environmental regulations. Rare earths have emerged as a significant point of contention in the trade tensions between the US and China. Last year, Beijing instituted export controls on rare earths amid trade tensions, highlighting apprehensions regarding the United States’ vulnerability in securing supply chains for these essential materials. “China still holds near-singular capacity to process rare earth metals, and that industrial and geopolitical edge cannot be overcome overnight,” stated Joel Dodge. The US Geological Survey identifies 60 “critical minerals” essential for economic and national security. These essential minerals comprise a variety of commodities, such as aluminum, cobalt, copper, lead, and nickel. The compilation further encompasses 15 rare earth elements, including cerium, dysprosium, neodymium, and samarium. Rare earths denote a classification of 17 distinct metallic elements. These commodities serve as critical inputs in ubiquitous technologies, including smartphones, batteries, and television displays, in addition to military and defense apparatus, such as lasers, fighter aircraft, and missile systems. According to Julie Klinger, the term “rare earths” is misleading, as these elements are actually quite common in the Earth’s crust.
However, the challenge lies in the extraction and refinement processes. In recent years, US lawmakers have expressed concerns regarding the nation’s dependence on imports for these essential elements. Efforts to establish domestic rare earths mining and refining in the United States have been underway; however, the timeline for these projects often extends over years, if not decades. The USGS omits Venezuela from its catalog of nations possessing rare earth elements, which features countries such as China, the United States, Brazil, and Greenland, among others. Experts indicate that the two and a half decades of governance by presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela have resulted in a significant information deficit regarding the country’s resource availability. Nevertheless, analysts contend that Venezuela possesses reserves of various minerals, including coltan — the source of tantalum and niobium — as well as bauxite, which may yield aluminum and gallium. Tantalum, niobium, aluminum, and gallium are classified as critical minerals according to the US Geological Survey. In 2009, Chávez emphasized the nation’s natural resources, referring to coltan as “blue gold.” In that year, Chávez announced the discovery of a significant coltan reserve within the country, as reported. In 2016, Maduro established the Orinoco Mining Arc, a designated area in Venezuela for mineral exploration and production. However, the region has been beset by unlawful mining activities. “While the country sits on large deposits of mineral resources, it is crippled by a combination of poor geological data, low-skilled labor, organized crime, lack of investments and a volatile policy environment,” stated Sung Choi. “Despite its current geological potential, Venezuela is unlikely to play any meaningful role in the critical minerals sector at least for the next decade,” Choi stated.