“Petrostate” is a term usually applied to countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, or Nigeria, where the production and, crucially, the export of oil and gas are fundamental to the domestic economy and foreign policy. Rarely, however, is the term applied to the world’s oldest, richest, and mightiest petrostate. That distinction belongs to the US, which this week attacked yet another petrostate, Venezuela, with the explicit aim of seizing the country’s oil infrastructure. For journalists, this means oil is clearly at the heart of the Venezuela story — which has to mean climate change is, as well.
Although most outlets have yet to take up the climate angle, a Guardian article published on January 6 proved illuminating. Noting that Venezuela holds the world’s largest known oil reserves — an estimated 17% of the global total —The Guardian reported that “even raising production to 1.5 million barrels of oil a day from [the country’s] current levels of around 1 million barrels would produce… more carbon pollution than what is emitted annually by major economies such as the UK and Brazil,” citing University of California, Santa Barbara professor Paasha Mahdavi. That, Mahdavi said, would be “terrible for the climate.”
The US has been a petrostate since long before Donald Trump came to power, under both Republicans and Democrats. Oil company CEOs populated the cabinets of Republicans George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush (whose family wealth was built on fossil fuels). And it was under Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden that the US regained its position as the largest annual producer of oil and exporter of gas.
“The United States is as much of an OPEC nation as most OPEC nations are.” So said Everett Ehrlich, who chaired the interagency deliberations on climate change in Bill Clinton administration’s, in an interview for CCNow executive director Mark Hertsgaard’s 2010 book, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. Ehrlich was explaining why a government that boasted Al Gore as vice president was much more timid about cutting greenhouse gas emissions than its European and Japanese allies were. “The US is more like an OPEC nation — an energy producer — while the Europeans and Japan are energy consumer nations,” Ehrlich added.
The US’s vast oil reserves have been key to its superpower status for more than a century. During World War I, the US supplied most of the oil that helped Britain and France prevail over Germany. US oil companies have worked alongside the White House, the State Department, and other US agencies ever since, at home via pro-monopoly regulation that pushed prices above free-market levels and abroad via such collaborations as the “Red Line Agreement” that in the 1920s gained US companies access to Middle Eastern oil.
Discoveries of massive deposits in Texas, Oklahoma, and California in the 1930s reinforced the country’s dominance; unlike any of the Axis or Allied powers, the US had its own oil to fight World War II. Its abundant domestic supply also transformed the US economy after the war, enabling Americans to buy more cars, move to expanding suburbs and drive on new interstates. Building all those cars, suburbs, and highways propelled a decades-long economic boom that ranks among the most spectacular in human history.
But the climate crisis underscores a truism about petrostates: Oil can be more a curse than a blessing. Scholars and journalists have documented that most petrostates are plagued by blatant corruption and inequality. Elites grab the revenues; poverty engulfs the masses. Violence is another by-product: Since 1973, one-fourth to one-half of the world’s wars have been “connected to oil interests,” Harvard University’s Kennedy School for Belfer Center notes. And of course burning oil is a primary driver of climate change.
The US attack on Venezuela is but the latest example of these destructive tendencies. Journalists need to help audiences understand the attack’s connections to oil, as well as what scientists have long warned: Humanity’s future depends on rapidly phasing out fossil fuels.
From Us
Climate Story in 2026. Join us next Wednesday, January 14, at 12pm US Eastern Time (5pm UTC), for a look ahead at the most pressing climate stories this year, with leading journalists and experts Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa; Fiona Harvey, an environment editor at The Guardian; and writer and activist Bill McKibben. RSVP here.
The Climate Newsroom. The deadline to apply for the next cohort of CCNow’s free training program for US local TV meteorologists, anchors, reporters, and producers is Friday, January 16. Learn more and apply.
Noteworthy Stories
‘Dirtiest, worst.’ Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world, are also among the most carbon and methane intensive to produce, refine, and use. Additionally, to maintain current production output will require more than $50 billion in new energy infrastructure investment. By Phil McKenna for Inside Climate News…
Activists arrested. Police searched the home of Indian climate activists Harjeet Singh and his partner Jyoti Awasthi earlier this week and arrested Singh. Investigators for the Enforcement Directorate, a law enforcement agency for India’s finance ministry, are alleging that Singh used foreign funds to promote an anti–fossil fuel agenda. In a statement, Singh and Awasthi called the allegations “baseless, biased and misleading.” By Jayashree Nandi and Neeraj Chauhan for The Hindustan Times…
US out of UNFCCC. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced that the US would withdraw from more than 60 international treaties, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the US Congress ratified in 1992 under then-president George H.W. Bush. By Somini Sengupta and Lisa Friedman for The New York Times…
Toxic data. After failing to build an energy-intensive AI data center in a mostly white county in Georgia, developers have set their sights on Colleton County, S.C., a predominantly Black community. “It is a test,” writes Adam Mahoney for Capital B News, “of who is asked to bear the risks of the data and AI boom, and what South Carolina is willing to sacrifice to power it.”
Research & Events
Mental health impacts. Journalists experience negative mental health consequences of climate reporting differently depending on the regions in which they’re based, according to a December survey from the Reuters Institute’s Oxford Climate Journalism Network. Read more.
Stories to Watch. Join the World Resource Institute on Thursday, January 29 for a look ahead at the most important climate stories of 2026, including the clean energy transition and how climate solutions are affecting housing and jobs. Learn more and RSVP here.
Jobs, Etc.
Jobs. McClatchy South Carolina is hiring a coastal climate reporter (Columbia, S.C.). KXXV is hiring a weekend meteorologist/climate reporter (Waco, Texas). The Solutions Journalism Network is hiring consultants in India and Brazil.
Fellowships. The Metcalf Ocean Nexus Academy, which was created by the Metcalf Institute and Ocean Nexus, in collaboration with The Uproot Project, is accepting applications for a three-month fellowship, running from May to July 2026; apply by January 9. The Y. Eva Tan Conservation Reporting Fellowship, from Mongabay, is accepting applications for its next cohort; applications are being reviewed on a rolling basis.
Workshop. The Climate Journalism Network Austria is organizing an investigative workshop, “Follow the Carbon, the Money and the Data,” in Vienna, for journalists based in Europe. In a two-day workshop on April 24 and 25, participants will learn how to trace emissions, examine lobbying at the EU level, and follow financial flows. Apply by January 31.
