Qatar Pushes U.S.-Venezuela Diplomacy as Trump Focuses on Military Action

Context: Gulf Arab nation is trying to act as a mediator in the conflict between the United States and Venezuela. The Trump administration is more focused on military options than on diplomacy. Marco Rubio has been trying to craft a strategy to oust Mr. Maduro through military pressure. President Trump has refrained from asking Qatar to play a significant diplomatic role.

Dive Deeper: Qatar is stepping up as a mediator in the conflict between the U.S. and Venezuela, despite President Trump's focus on military action in the region. The Venezuelan government, led by President Nicolás Maduro, is open to Qatar's diplomatic efforts, but they haven't gained traction with the Trump administration, which seems more inclined toward military solutions.

The Pentagon has increased its military presence in the Caribbean, deploying 10,000 troops to bases in Puerto Rico, along with warships and submarines, indicating a potential escalation of military operations.

Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State and national security adviser, views Maduro as an illegitimate leader and is advocating for a strategy that relies on military pressure to remove him from power. This approach is supported by key figures in the Trump administration, including the CIA director and Trump's chief domestic policy adviser.

Qatar's diplomatic efforts include facilitating communication between the U.S. and Venezuela, aiming to establish a more structured dialogue. They have engaged with both the Biden administration and Venezuelan officials to explore avenues for negotiation.

Despite Trump's apparent reluctance to engage diplomatically, Maduro has expressed a desire to re-establish communication lines with the U.S., particularly regarding issues like migration and the release of American prisoners.

Qatar has been involved in multiple diplomatic negotiations, including those related to the Trump administration's interests in the Middle East, while also seeking to make commercial deals in Venezuela's oil-and-gas sector.....

“What’s up with Qatar and Venezuela? I don’t see the connection unless it’s ‘Iran’.”

They are both OPEC nation’s. Venezuela has the largest recoverable hydrocarbon resources on earth it’s heavy oil basin has a trillion barrels in it of which 15% ish percent is recoverable at anything close to economic rates. Technically you could get at 60-80% depending on how hard you went at it with solvents, steam gravity drainage or huff and puff, super critical CO2, electromagnetic waves to heat it, joule heating it’s EROI is already close to one, you could easily go negative and expend more energy extracting it vs what product comes out of the ground then it’s not an energy source it’s a sink. You could trade energy types say nuclear heated steam for semi liquid petroleum really bitumen and asphalt not petroleum. The net loss of primary exergy is still there but you do get a desired product worth more than the BTUs of steam to get at it in dollars. Nuclear heat is cheap oil is expensive. Same could be said of say solar electrons at 3/10s of a cent per kWh that’s 3412BTU a MMBTU would then cost 87 cents.

[Using the 2021 average SOR for SAGD of 2.7 and a conservative estimate of 3.9 million BTU per barrel of steam:

This means approximately 10.53 million BTU of thermal energy would be used per barrel of oil production for a SAGD operation with an SOR of 2.7.]

That’s $9.35 cents worth of solar joule heating.

CANDU nukes produce $18 per megawatt hour at the plant gate. That’s 1.8c per kWh so $55.55 per bbl in nuclear electrons. The steam off a CANDU directly could be used but you can only move it 25 ish km before it’s too cold to use for SAGD oil recovery so any further you must move electrons.

Gas turbines are $50 and coal is $35 at minimums for break even prices per megawatt hours. So those sources are out you would be better off burning gas on site for the 10.53 MMBTU to steam directly. $4 MMBTU wholesale gas is then $42.12 per bbl produced in NatGas costs.

There there is this inconvenient fact....

One barrel of oil contains approximately 5.6 to 5.8 million British Thermal Units (MMBtu).

So it takes 10.53 MMBTU of steam to get out 5.6 MMBTU of bitumen. Simple fact is you cannot run a civilization long term on negative EROI energy it is impossible by the very physics of it. Yes you can make lots of profit in the short term by burning one energy source for another of the first one is worth less on the market than the product of the combustion of the first. This is the greed that is driving the world currently it’s profit motive not solid physics.

Note how the math does work for fusion energy...the sun is a fusion reactor in the sky, we have the means to make energy harvesting machines that return well over 100 times their energy cost to create in electrons produced. A panel in a 4 kWh PVOUT pays back it’s EROI in under 6 month’s and has a 30 year minimum life to 80% original capacity there are panels over 40 years old with old tech still working at 80% capacity it’s expected that current thin film will last 50 years or more till under 75% they are warranted to 30(80%) but real world decline curves show an asymptotic drop off trend.

Remember a single hour of sunshine falling on Texas is more energy than the entire human race uses in a day all 8+ billion of us. It’s never a primary energy source supply problem it is a capture, distribution, and storage problem.

“Qatar made its fortune on Natural Gas. Venezuela must have deposits Qatar wants to exploit that a war would interfere with. Don’t be fooled, Qatar is always about Qatar and the Al-Thani family that runs it.”

Qatar is the world’s largest LNG exporter sitting on some of the largest single Natgas reserves. Venezuela is the largest colder of heavy hydrocarbons on earth a trillion barrels in the Orinoco river basin. They are solid asphalt and bitumen in the ground. You must heat them somehow to at least 60C to make them flow like a semi liquid. You drill two bores one above the other horizontally through the formation you pump steam..LOTS of steam down the top bore it heats and liquefies the heavy hydrocarbons that then drain down and out the bottom bore.

This takes 10.53 million BTU per barrels produced that’s a lot of heat. The only economical way to get that much heat in a spot directly over or in those well bores is natural gas on site combustion. And you need cheap gas to even make it work. At $4 MMBTU Ngas it’s $42.12 just for the gas alone per barrels produced.

[$1.60 to $5.50 per MMBtu for US Gulf Coast to Europe, depending on daily charter rates, fuel costs, and vessel availability.]

It’s twice the distance to Qatar to VZ so basically to produce $70 bbl oil Qatar and VZ have to have delivered gas in the $3 range the means Qatar is basically giving the has to VZ for a cut in the profit of the sales of the produced bitumen.

^^^^ this is why QT and VZ are buddies

Hydrocarbons are too precious of a resource it should be used for petrochemicals medicines lubricants adhesives polymers fertilizer anything but burning it to the sky it’s far too valuable as a raw resource then burning it once and it’s gone forever fossil resources should only be used to make energy harvesting machines that have a minimum e o r i of at least 40 some have over 100 and nuclear can be into the thousands.

Jesse right as usual.

https://x.com/JessePeltan/status/1773117659049079220

The world used 592 exajoules in 2024...

The total amount of solar energy absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and land is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year.

We have a fusion reactor it’s in the sky and continually baths the entire planet in its glory. Look as t those two numbers every other energy source is a rounding error.

Compared to The amount of geothermal heat flux from the Earth is estimated to be approximately 1,400 to 1,800 exajoules per year.

Earth would be an ice ball without the sun.

With enhanced geothermal and millimeter wave plasma drilling. .

Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS): Next-generation technologies like EGS aim to unlock a much larger portion of the geothermal potential by drilling deeper into the hotter, drier rock that is widely available. Estimates suggest that at a depth of 5 km, the global electricity potential is 21,000 (EJ), with even larger amounts at greater depths.

I know a couple of the Geos in Houston working with this tech.

https://newatlas.com/energy/quaise-energy-millimeter-wave-drill-demo-houston/

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