Venezuelan Oil and the Limits of U.S. Refining Capacity

Venezuelan crude is attractive to complex U.S. refiners with coking capacity, but only a subset of Gulf and East Coast plants can fully process the heavy, high-sulfur oil.
Higher Venezuelan supply would displace Canadian, Mexican, and some Middle Eastern grades rather than broadly lift U.S. demand.
Venezuela’s low-hanging fruit is rather limited: According to Norwegian energy consultancy Rystad Energy, only 300-350 kbpd can be quickly restored with minimal spending from the current clip of 800,000 bpd-1 million bpd, with production beyond 1.4 mbpd requiring heavy, sustained investment. 

Rystad estimates that Venezuela will require $53 billion over the next 15 years just to keep production flat at 1.1 mbpd, but could need up to $183 billion over the same period to ramp up production to over 3 million bpd, roughly equivalent to the entire North American land capex for one year.