Prof G Markets - What Venezuela’s Regime Change Means for Oil

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Ed Elson checks in with Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics, on his outlook for 2026 to start the year. Then Rapidan Energy Group founder and president, Bob McNally, joins the show to discuss what President Maduro’s ouster means for the oil markets.  Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Follow Scott on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's number, 303 billion. That's how many barrels of oil are sitting in Venezuela, more than any other nation in the world. That is $18 trillion worth of oil at current oil prices, roughly equal to the GDP of China. However, none of this has anything to do with what happened this week. Money markets matter. If money is evil, then that building is hell. The show goes up! Welcome to Profi Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is January 6th. Let's check in on yesterday's

market vitals. The major indices climbed with the Dow closing at a record. The price of oil rose on President Maduro's capture in Venezuela. More on that later. Meanwhile, treasury yields dropped and finally Bitcoin rallied above $94,000. Okay, what else is happening? It is off first daily episode of the year. And even though we took a holiday break, the market certainly did not. So here to help us review what we missed at the end of the year and also discuss the outlook for 2026. We are speaking with Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. Mark, welcome back to property markets and happy New Year. Happy New Year, Ed. Thanks for the opportunity. It's good to be with you. Absolutely. You are our first guest back in the new

year, which is a huge honor, as I'm sure you will know. I'm sure you say that to all the economists, but I'll take it. I'll take it. So we, well, first we should want to start with your scorecard for 2025. You basically add up all of your predictions from last year and compare it to what we actually saw. You pretty much nailed most of it. I'm just looking at the scorecard now. job growth, GDP growth, unemployment rate was pretty accurate. I mean, generally pretty accurate across the board. I guess which things surprised you in 2025, which things did you get wrong? What sort of struck you? Well, the first thing is that we got that close. As you know, Ed,

there was a lot of drama in 2025, lots of things going on, tariffs, immigration, doge. know, just it seemed endless. And despite all of that, the numbers came in pretty close to what we thought they would at the start of the year, a start of 2025. The thing that I took greatest pleasure in was jobs. You know, average monthly job growth in 2025 compared to 2024 was $125,000 on the nose. And our forecast, $124,000 per month. Now, we've got to be truth in forecasting, you know, we were overly pessimistic about jobs in the first half of the year and overly optimistic in the second half after. And really, the demarcation point here was Liberation Day. That was when things kind of changed. That was back in April of last year. So we didn't get the entire year right. But on average through the year, we got it right. The thing that we missed most was around asset prices. and the increase. I mean, the equity market was up 15% calendar year, 25 over 24.

We expected 10% a good year, but it was even better than that. And even house prices, and we've been forecasting house prices and doing a lot of work there for decades. You know, they came in up three, four percent. We were expecting closer to one, two percent. So, you know, asset prices came a little bit more stronger. But, again, you know, it was a pretty good year from a forecasting perspective. And it's not always that way. so I'll take it and I'm enjoying it.

Something that you undershot, and to be fair, let's give you your credit. I think I did. I mean, this was pretty accurate across the board, but you did undershoot on inflation. You forecasted 2.3%. It's higher than that, which is a whole other conversation. But the thing I kind of want to focus on right now is the most recent CPI report, we got while we were gone, so we haven't had a chance to discuss it on the podcast. And it showed that inflation actually slowed down to 2.7% in November, which totally shocked me.

And honestly, my first reaction, I mean, I was kind of checked out at this point, getting ready for the holiday. But my first reaction was, this is not right. And I usually hate to be that guy. I hate to be the guy who just doesn't trust the number. because I think we should always just trust the numbers. But that was my first instinct. I haven't really dug into it. But then actually, you said yourself that that number is flawed. It went from 3% in September, then down to 2.7% in November,

which seems crazy to me. You say that it's flawed. Why is it flawed? What is your reaction to the CPI that we saw? Yeah, and it's okay to be that guy every once in a while when, in fact, it's right to be that way. And this goes back to the government shutdown and the fact that the survey

that the Bureau of Labor Statistics does wasn't done in the month of October. We were shut down. They couldn't do the survey. They couldn't go back and fix it. So they had to make the BLS, the keeper of the data, had to make some assumption

about what happened in the month of October. And the assumption they used is one that they always use when they have something missing. and that is no change. They assume no change in prices in the month of October. And for the missing data that they had some data that they wasn't based on their survey that they could use, but anything based on their survey, and that was the bulk of the data, 90% of the goods and services come from the survey. They just assumed effectively no change. And, you know,

if it's one or two products that you don't have data for and you make that assumption, no big deal, but when it's 90% of the products that you're surveying, that's a big deal. And so I, that makes no sense, right? And it's not just me saying that. Everyone says that makes no sense. It does not make any sense in the context of trying to understand inflation. And so what I did is went back and I said, okay, I can collect even more data on different prices for goods and service.

Let's use that. And then for those things that I can't get other data for, I'm going to use my forecast because we've done a lot of work over the years, modeling, you know, these different prices for different components, goods and services. And if you do that, then it shows that inflation, it did not decelerate. It remains on consumer price inflation, CPI inflation, at 3% year over year. And just for context, you know, the Fed would say in an ideal world, I would want CPI inflation, you know, 2, 2, 2, 3, something like that, and we're at 3, and we're still at 3. So that you were dead on to say something doesn't feel right because it wasn't right.

something to consider. One last point, then I'll stop. This problem with the data is going to continue on a year-over-year basis until next October when we actually get some data. So we're going to be in this awkward position of trying to, you know, quote-unquote, correct the data to make it more reflective of actual reality over the next year until we get to the other, we do a round-trip here on the data. I hadn't even considered that. We are going to be arguing about which numbers are real and which are fake for another year. The ramifications are large. Let's just look at your 2026 forecast. So some interesting numbers here. We had 2.1% GDP growth in 2025. You project 2.5% GDP growth. So you believe that the economy is actually going to

grow faster in 2026. Break down that number for us. So that's because we're going to get a lot of juice from monetary, but particularly fiscal policy. So in 2025, we got a little bit of support from the Fed that that cut interest rates a little bit. But on the fiscal policy side, that's government spending and taxes, that was actually a bit of a restraint on growth because of Doge. Remember, Doge, the widespread job cuts that really hammered the economy early in the year. Yeah, hard to forget. It's hard to forget. Complete, you know, utter failure, but, you know, in terms of objectives, but, you know, it did do a lot of damage to...

It was fun while it lost it. Yeah. But in 2026, because of the one big beautiful bill act, the OBBA that was passed under reconciliation back in last summer, that is going to lift growth by just about the difference in GDP in 26 compared to 2025, about four or five-tenths of percent. And that's tax cuts. deficit finance. These are deficit finance tax. You don't get to juice. You don't get the economic growth unless you're borrowing the money to finance it. And it's both on the corporate side. There's the expensing of investment, and that juices up investment by businesses. And we're already starting to see that in some of the data. And, of course, the tax cuts to individuals.

That's going to start affecting the economy pretty quickly because, households are going to see big refund checks this year because the tax rates were already lowered, but people's withholding didn't change, so they're going to get, when they file their taxes, they're going to get a bigger refund check. And it's almost $100 billion in additional money, and that's real money to, you know, folks that are going to go out and spend it, and that's going to juice things up. So that's four or five, ten. So that's the difference between 2026 compared to 2025.

It's going to be an okay year, a stronger growth, but that all goes to the temporary boost that you get from the stimulus. And obviously, all by design, right, this is an election year. We've got the election come November. The idea here is to, you know, juice up the economy as you get into the election process, which is going to be in full gear sometime this summer. And that's when the stimulus, the fiscal stimulus will be at its peak about that time. Yes, which would also explain the federal budget deficit, which you say will grow to $2.1 trillion. It is so funny that, you know, part of the idea that Trump campaigned on was balancing the budget. And here we are, you're telling us the economy is going to grow because we're just going to spend so much that it must grow.

There are a few other numbers here. I just want to get your quick reactions to. You say the unemployment rate will rise to 4.4.4.4.5. 6%, you say inflation will rise to 3.1%, which is not great. That's possibly the bad side, the dark side of what we'll see in 2026. Just let's get your reactions to those numbers. Why have you gone with those numbers? What are you predicting in terms of the job market and inflation? Yeah, and pretty much what I'm saying there, if it's 4.6% for the calendar year of 2026, I'm basically saying unemployment is going to level – it's already at 4-6 going into the year.

Right. So it's basically flat. So if we grow 2.5% GDP, we're going to get enough jobs to absorb the growth in the labor force, and we're going to get stable unemployment. You know, somewhere – it's probably going to rise a little bit here over the next few months and then come in towards – once you get all that fiscal stimulus and all that juice, you'll start to come in a little bit. But you'll end the year, on average, 4-6, very similar to what it is today, 4-6. Same with inflation as we just discussed CPI, consumer price inflation coming into 2026 is about 3%. It's going to go a little higher here in the next few months because there's still more tariff pass-through that's going to

occur, but it's going to moderate towards the end of the year, and on average through the year, it's going to be about 3%. So that's going to be uncomfortable, right? I mean, 4-6 is above full-employment unemployment, the full-employment-employment, the full-employment unemployment rate, which, you know, most people and I would put it around four. So that's a little long, it's not bad, but it's a little uncomfortable. And 3% inflation is, you know, again, not bad, but it's also uncomfortable. That's above the Fed's target. So it's going to feel, the year's going to feel okay, just, but not quite right. And then, of course, you know, you were left with those bigger budget deficits to deal with down the road. Yeah. Okay. Mark Zandi,

chief economist at Moody's Analytics. Mark, thank you very much. It's good to see you. Well, now, and I got a track record, right? So you're going to play this back. We'll check back a year from now. Yeah, exactly. Thanks for the opportunity. Appreciate it.

After the break, what Venezuela's regime change means for the markets. If you're enjoying the show, give Profi markets a follow. Support for the show comes from Vanta. Customer trust can make or break your business. and the more your business grows, the more complex your security and compliance tools get. It can turn into chaos, and chaos isn't a security strategy. That's where Vanta comes in. Think of Vanta as your always-on AI-powered security expert who scales with you.

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We're back with Profty Markets. The U.S. captured Venezuela's President Nicholas Maduro in a high-risk raid over the weekend. The Trump administration says it plans to, quote, run the country until a transition is complete. As for the markets, this is really an oil story. While Venezuela only produces roughly 1% of global oil today, it also has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Shares of oil giants, Chevron and ExxonMobil surged on expectations that U.S. firms will get first access to the market. However, analysts say that getting production back to prior levels could take years and over $100 billion. So the big questions are still unanswered. Who controls the

oil, who gets access, and how does it all hit the global supply? So here to discuss this, Jacob, and what it means for the energy sector, we're speaking with Rapidan Energy Group founder and president Bob McNally. Bob, thank you for joining us on Profji Markets. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me on today. Absolutely. So the U.S. has captured Maduro, pretty unbelievable series of events here.

It looks as if the administration is going to run Venezuela, at least for the foreseeable future. Let's just start with your initial reactions to what happened here. Were you surprised? What do you make of all of this? Well, we weren't surprised, and our clients weren't surprised. I can show you the proof. We told clients on December 15th, we raised our odds of President removing Maduro from 60 to 70%. We didn't know the precise timing, but we were very sure the president had decided to remove the Maduro.

He's been negotiating with him, so it was a question of whether Maduro lives, rather would leave on a Gulfstream 3 and go to an apartment in Madrid or be taken out in a jumpsuit. I mean, there's different options, and then went that way. So we weren't surprised at all. And we're not surprised that the oil markets have taken it sort of in a blasé way so far, because really Venezuela is not that important in terms of near-term oil. supply and price formation. You know, when I step back and look at it, though, I have to compare it to, and I was in the White House and the National Security Council in the beginning of Iraq, right, and so 2002, 2003, and how very different that started relative to this. So in that case, we had a decisive removal of the regime. I mean, the military, he was gone. And we had then implemented

an elaborate plan for the post-war, and it wasn't about oil. We just not hand out all the contracts to U.S. companies. Chinese companies, Russian companies went into Iraq. So with, now, we can argue that that turned out a little rough, so I'm not going to say it was a smashing success. But the beginning, it featured that, right? Decisive change of regime. We had a plan, and it wasn't about U.S. oil companies. This is very important. different in every respect. There is no decisive change. All we know for sure is that Nicolas Maduro and his wife are in New York and we're arraigned today. That's about it. The regime is still there. There's a pressure and coercion that's going on. There doesn't appear to be any kind of a plan for the day after

the Maduro regime. And so, and finally, it is not all about oil. It's about many things. But the president has made very clear that getting U.S. oil companies back into Venezuela and getting its production back up with U.S. companies is one of the main objectives of this. So in every respect, very different than how the liberation of Iraq took place. So that strikes me. But we're still in this fluid area where we're not quite sure what the end state's going to be in terms of a regime in Caracas. Just looking at the oil market in Venezuela. You mention there that it's not that important in the short term. However, they also have the largest oil reserves of any nation in the world. Give us like a detailed or semi-detailed understanding

of what actually is going on with the oil in Venezuela. What are their capabilities? How important is it? And why is it that it's not that relevant in the short term? the world consumes about 105 million barrels a day of, we call it liquids, mostly crude oil. There are other things in there, some petrochemical feed stops, some biofuels, refinery gain, but just to keep it simple, 100 or so, 105 million barrels a day. Venezuela provides a little less than a million barrels a day, so less than a percent of total world supply. 25 years ago, Venezuela was up at 3 percent. It was about 3 million barrels. barrels today, even a little more of production. So its production has fallen from three to

about, to less than a million barrels a day. Now, Venezuela does have the world's largest proved reserves, a little over 300 billion barrels. However, not all reserves are the same. Not all oil is. This is a very important concept for folks to get as we talk about how quickly will they come back and so forth. Oil ranges in quality. You've got champagne quality oil, light, low sulfur, beautiful. U.S. shale is like that. And then you've got coffee grounds on the other end of the range, gunky, sulfurous, heavy, full of metals, okay, champagne to coffee grounds, then as well as the coffee ground variety. And to turn those coffee grounds into the gasoline that you and I drive with, or your gas oil or jet fuel, etc., you need a lot of work and blending and upgrading or in Canada,

SAG-D, you need a lot of industrial processes to turn this heavy oil. So it's, whereas the champagne kind of oil is almost ready to go. It requires less costly easy refining. So this is an important feature about Venezuela. Its reserves are enormous, world's biggest, but extremely costly to produce at scale. Now, the good news is Venezuela used to have a world-class state oil company, Peda Vesa. And in the 1990s, they opened up to Western companies. And they invited them in.

The big U.S. companies went in. Other companies went in. And working with Peda Vesa, really talented engineers, relatively low corruption, efficient production. They really boosted Venezuelan production. It was exporting more to the United States than even Canada was. But then unfortunately, Chavez happened. Hugo Chavez comes in, communist, populist dictatorship, kicks the U.S. companies out, except for a Chevron, which has a small license.

and runs the place into the ground. So you've seen this in other countries where governments come in. They chase away all the talented engineers that they had, Venezuelans, all left for Canada, the United States, Middle East. They all went, and the engineers went to produce oil there. They underinvested, they let the equipment run down. So all that expensive equipment that the American companies had invested in to produce that heavy oil at scale was left to go to rot, basically.

And it declined, and here we are. Venezuela's poor, production is falling, and getting it back up and running is going to be a mammoth undertaking measured in years to decades and tens of billions of dollars. But look, I think a real important context of sort of what does Venezuela really mean and what does it matter is, do we need Venezuela's, right? Up until a few months ago, if you and I were having this conversation a year ago, I mean, the dominant narrative was, well, oil demand is going to peak pretty soon. Look at those EVs coming. Look at climate change policies. Most people believed that oil demand was going to stop growing about 2030 in a few years, and then either plateau or fall.

If you believe that, we don't need another Venezuela. You may not need major oil new projects at all, including the IEA, was saying, look, it's not clear. If we're going to get to net zero, we shouldn't even be permitting new fields. We should, we can, you know, we don't need these new big projects. But what's fortunate for Venezuela and for oil companies is I would say toward the end of last year, this narrative, this peak demand narrative, really began to break down and collapse. And I think look at the major forecasters from the IEA to the major companies that think tanks have put out for everybody's dialing back and saying, wait a minute, these EVs aren't coming fast enough.

Climate change policies are being subordinated to energy security, affordability, Canada, the U.S., California, New York, Europe, China, everywhere is shifting the focus back to affordability and energy security. So the world is starting to realize, oh, boy, we need a lot more oil after 2030 than we thought. Not next year, but after 2030. And this is where the timing is perfect for Venezuela to come on and say, well, what just so happens? We have 300 billion barrels here, and maybe we'll be willing to, you know, invite capital and expertise, get those Venezuelan expats back and get this thing humming because it would be just what we needed to avoid too tight of a market early in the next decade. Just thinking about what happens next. I mean, you mentioned that it's a short term

going to be difficult to make that oil valuable to get it out of the ground, to fix up the infrastructure and to make it usable. But it seems as though all you need to do is get your act together, invest billions and billions of dollars, which appears to be exactly what Trump and the oil companies are prepared to do. And then I guess the question becomes, what is America's role in this nation moving forward? It seems pretty clear that they are going to commit to getting that oil out of the ground. And Chevron and Exxon, they're all going to go in and figure out how to make money off of this. But I guess the sort of the open question is, where does the U.S. government stand in this transaction?

Will they just run the country? Do they just own the oil now? What is their role in this at this point? Well, those two questions are linked, right? And I do think you say the U.S. companies are going to get their act together, get the money together, and go in and do it slowly, slowly. Any oil company and the board of an oil company looking to sanction billions of dollars into Venezuela is going to be thinking about the world well beyond the Trump administration.

The Trump administration is already over in terms of the lifetime that oil companies think in. Decades, decades. They've got to think about will this investment pay off if Gavin Newsom is president or AOC is president or J.D. Vance is president. And so I think there's going to be a mismatch, honestly, between some folks in the Trump administration who want to see that capital go in fast and want to see barrels come out soon. and the oil companies who are going to be very cautious about this, very cautious, not only having gotten kicked out 25 years ago, but is there a stable regime? Can our people operate safely there? What kind of contracts are we going to get? How are we going to get our money out? How badly dilapidated is the system is? Because they have other options. You can drill in the

Permian. You can drill in, you can produce in Canada. Guyana's doing pretty well. Offshore is attractive. There are other options to spend your capital than betting the farm on the whale of a Venezuelan project, which has had a tumultuous history to be sure. So even if President Trump stepped up, and I don't hear they're going to do this, and they said, look, we got your back, U.S. government's going to co-invest with you, we're going to take a stake, we're going to mitigate all your risk. That's good for another three years or so, assuming they even did it, right? And Three years will only begin the very beginning stages of the investment and the workovers and the infrastructure investment that we would need to get Venezuela up and running. So an oil company would have to be confident that, you know, it can manage these risks for decades and betting that the U.S. government is going to be a solid financial or political partner given the volatility we've seen politically here.

I don't think that's a bet they would easily take. fascinating, and I'm sure that this conversation is going to continue probably for the next few weeks, certainly, I would say probably months. In any case, this was really interesting. Thanks for your time, Bob. Thank you, Ed. Thanks for having me on. Well, we're starting the year with a bang. I assumed our first big story would have something to do with AI or tech or maybe even. private credit, I did not think that it would be a military story, and I especially didn't think it would be the forcible removal of a foreign leader, the first one by the US, by the way,

in more than three decades. But here we are. That's what's happened. 2026 is up and running. Now, this is a developing story. Our perspective might change as this all unfolds. But while we are here, I will just give you my quick thoughts on very very. Venezuela and what this invasion means for us. So the first thing to consider is what the administration has told us about this invasion. And based on what they have told us, it seems that this whole thing seems to revolve around Maduro and bringing him to justice. The White House has emphasized that Maduro will, quote, finally face justice for his crimes. They said he will, quote, soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts. And they also said

that this is, quote, not regime change. This is justice. That's what they have told us about what happened. Now, depending on your position on foreign policy, this might seem like a very fair reason to go and invade another nation. In fact, Americans and many Venezuelans would agree on this. They would agree that this is a good thing, that this is a good reason to intervene. But that's not really my question here. I'm actually less interested in whether or not this was a fair reason to invade. I'm more interested in whether or not this was the reason that we invaded. My question is, was this really about bringing a dictator to justice? Or was this about something else. Now, if Trump had ever demonstrated an interest in foreign policy and

foreign justice at any point in his career, then maybe I'd be inclined to believe the story and the reasoning they're telling us. However, he has never been interested in this kind of thing. In fact, Trump has historically gotten along really well with autocrats and murderous dictators, whether it's Putin or Kim Jong-un or Lukashenko or even the former president of Honduras, who Trump just pardoned after he was found guilty of using his position as president to traffic drugs into the U.S., which is, by the way, the very thing for which Maduro has been charged himself. In other words, I don't really think that Trump has an issue with people like Nicholas Maduro. He's gotten along with many people just like him before. In addition,

It has long been Trump's position that we shouldn't do things like what we just saw, that we shouldn't get involved with other nations' issues and other nations' wars. He was vocally against the war in Iraq, for example. He also said we should, quote, stop racing to topple foreign regimes we know nothing about. He built his campaign on this principle, that we need to focus on America and domestic issues, and we need to stop worrying about other nations and their political issues. This was the whole premise of America First. So why is he reversing his position right now?

Well, as we often say on this podcast, if you want to know the truth, do not read the press release. You should read and observe what's happening in the markets, because the markets usually tell you the real story. So let's look at the markets. In the few days since Maduro was captured, we saw some pretty. interesting stock market activity. We'll start with the American oil stocks. Exxon Mobil stock has risen more than 2%. Canoco Phillips has risen 4%. Chevron has risen 6%. Moving on to the large American oil refinery companies. We've seen Marathon Petroleum and Phillips 66, both rising 6%. Valero rose more than 9%. Then we look at the oil field service firms, companies like Halliburton, which have risen as much as 10%. Overall,

In just a few days, U.S. oil stocks have added more than $100 billion in market value. So the truth is that this invasion, just like any other imperial or colonial operation, is simply about money. And as uncomfortable as that might sound, the reality is taking over another country, occupying their territory, seizing their assets, especially if they've got oil, That is a very profitable business. And that is why so many nations through history have employed this strategy, whether it was the Romans or the British or indeed the United States. Building and expanding your empire through violent force is a great business. And that is the cold, hard truth. Now, the question many would ask is, does that make it right or fair or acceptable to invade another nation? And again, I'm not going to be the one to make a value judgment here, because all I want for us to be clear on is what is actually happening, what we're actually getting ourselves into.

Because no, this is not really about justice or liberation. In fact, Trump revealed his true feelings in a press conference where he mentioned the word oil six times more than the word drugs. This is expansionism. This is interventionism. This is really imperialism in his purest form. Our government has decided it wants to be. build an empire from Greenland to Venezuela, and they found themselves a good place to start. Now, you may like empires. You may not like empires. I don't really care. But all I would ask is that we continue this conversation honestly, and that we recognize this decision for what it is. It's not about Maduro. It's not about human rights. It's not even about socialism. No, as always, this is about money. Okay, that's it for today.

This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss, edited by Joel Passon, and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our research team is Dan Chilan, Isabella Kinsel, Chris O'Donoghue, and Mia Silverio. Thank you for listening to Property Markets from Property Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I will see you tomorrow.