Syria was a player before the war. A major civil war and each side trying to deny the other access to that revenue by destroying pipelines, platforms, and blowing up storage facilities takes its toll.
Venezuela: let’s assume you’re right and they over inflated their numbers, then they would still be number #2: https://2b1stconsulting.com/proven-reserves/ (2012 data)
With us taking over Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Venezuela, you have seen our control over the global “traded” oil increase from about 2/3rds (1991) to 4/5ths (current).
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-production-by-country
If this were a monopoly game. We won.
1.) We have the political reigns in our hands or a high degree of influence in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Iraq, Venezuela, Syria, Libya, Nigeria, Canada, Egypt and Mexico. We are of course ourselves a huge energy producer.
2.) Most of the oil and gas is traded in the USD and we can play games with that too.
3.) The systems managing the trading (the payment networks for example), belong to us.
4.) We have declared ourselves the world’s policeman a long time ago, we make the rules and selectively apply them. So for example, our naval blockade of Venezuela and seizing their tankers is acceptable, but Iran doing that to a neighbor, or Libya doing that to their Gulf, or China closing the South China Sea would escalate to our military involvement and we would talk about rule of law, international conventions, bla bla bla. We own the water ways (Panama and Suez) and keep them open to “us” but can deny their use to those we don’t like. It’s good to be the king.
You can do things like this when you’re the king: https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/world-news/us-blew-up-nord-stream-pipeline-in-covert-operation-says-top-investigative-journalist/articleshow/97812841.cms
And no one will look to hard either. LOL
Most the world runs on energy we control.
I invite you to revisit some of your statements.
“With us taking over Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Venezuela...” Who is “us”? Multinational energy companies don’t necessarily align with US policy interests. Up until last year, US-based majors have shied away from Iraq. (That changed last year, but active production has predominantly been in the hands of Royal Dutch Shell, ENI, Total, BP, and other European companies.)
We have no more and no less influence over the Arabs than we have had for the past half century. The Saudis are our closest sometimes-allies, but they have not been reluctant to manipulate the market in order to weaken US competition. They drove prices down by flooding the market and thereby blew up US domestic small and mid-sized producers. The Saudis have the power and patience to endure short-term pain in order to cripple US production, as they did most spectacularly in 2020. I question what real long-term influence we have on any foreign country’s production levels. If we want cheaper oil, will Nigeria or Canada or Mexico bend the knee? I doubt it. (By the way, of all the countries you list, Canada was probably the most likely to align our interests with theirs, but that changed last year.)
When you say Syria was at one time a player, it’s now ranked #58 in the world as a producer at 60,000 barrels a day. If it were to return to its 2011 peak of 305,000 barrels a day, it would still be only #32, between Australia and Turkmenistan.
Being king, or hegemon, or whatever you want to call it, gives us strategic muscle to shut down or limit exports from strategic adversaries, but it doesn’t create new production to meet our needs.
One last point, and a completely apolitical one: to the extent that governmental policies result in cheaper energy for the American consumer, the less the incentive for US producers to Drill, Baby, Drill. There is the conundrum of affordability today constraining availability in the future.