RCP Washington editor Carl Cannon explained why American energy companies might be skeptical to invest in Venezuela when the Trump administration asks them to Wednesday on the RealClearPolitics podcast: CARL CANNON: Do you realize what a hard sell this is?

Venezuela can lift oil output incrementally in the near term, but sweeping changes are needed to significantly revive the country’s production, according to the boss of one of the world’s oilfield services giants.

The United States is preparing to issue a general license that would ease sanctions on Venezuela’s energy sector in a bid to jump-start oil exports and attract investment after the dramatic U.S. capture of former Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro earlier this month,

Venezuela's legislature has approved opening the nation's oil sector to privatization. This decision reverses a key principle of the socialist movement that has ruled for over two decades.

M aría-Elena Pombo has created “petroleum weavings,” turning threads made from oil into elaborate yarnlike wall hangings. Oil, she told us, has shaped her life. Her father, an oil engineer, met her mother after he moved to Cabimas,