Fwd: Venezuela's big methane problem

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Loretta Lohman

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Jan 9, 2026, 1:05:23 PM (10 days ago) Jan 9

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The Trump administration wants American companies to modernize oil production in Venezuela. There are many roadblocks to that happening, though, including the country’s huge methane problem.

The issue is so big, it’s visible from space. Today’s newsletter looks at how decrepit, leaky infrastructure might deter oil majors from jumping into the fray.

Meanwhile, Meta agreed to several nuclear deals for its data centers that will make it the biggest buyer of atomic power among its peers. And scroll down to read the latest on Storm Goretti unleashing hurricane-force winds on England and France — leaving hundreds of thousands of homes in the dark.

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The methane menace

By Aaron Clark

Oil executives weighing a potential investment in Venezuela’s fields may want to check out the view from space. Satellites have detected enormous amounts of methane billowing from the country’s abandoned oil rigs, rusty pipelines and other dilapidated energy infrastructure.

The emissions not only reflect potential lost revenue — they’re also likely to give US oil majors pause about operating in Venezuela. That could leave smaller, less experienced companies and private equity firms to attempt to fulfill US President Donald Trump’s plan to revive the nation’s heavy crude output after capturing President Nicolas Maduro.

Satellite image of methane billowing from Venezuela’s dilapidated energy infrastructure. Source: Kayrros SAS, processed L1B image from DLR's EnMAP

Recurring emissions are a “red flag” to oil and gas operators, said Clayton Nash, director of strategic development at Tegre Corp., a Colorado-based engineering and design consultancy. “That’s one way that you’re going to know that you’ve got facilities that are not operated well.”

Roughly 13 billion cubic meters of Venezuela’s natural gas is flared, vented or leaked into the atmosphere every year, wasting about $1.4 billion of potential revenue, according to Capterio Ltd., a British company that helps to reduce such emissions.

About a quarter of Venezuela’s gas output is lost to the atmosphere, the highest rate in the world and nearly 10 times above the global average, according to a satellite analysis published last month in Nature Communications. All that methane is dangerous: The greenhouse gas is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet over a 20-year period.

Much of Venezuela’s methane emissions problem stems from natural gas that is produced alongside more valuable oil. Petróleos de Venezuela SA, the state-run oil company, doesn’t have enough pipelines, storage facilities or a liquefied natural gas export facility to capture and transport the extra fuel. So the gas is flared, vented or simply leaks away.

Venezuela’s giant and persistent methane plumes also indicate that what infrastructure exists is rapidly declining and leaky, following years of underinvestment, lack of maintenance and theft. Satellites have detected large methane clouds in several major production areas, including the Orinoco Belt near Maturin and Lake Maracaibo, according to BloombergNEF.

That highlights one of the main challenges facing any operator considering investing in the country, where existing systems may be expensive to fix and require extensive upkeep for decades.

“Venezuela’s fields will not only need an overhaul but also require careful operational management and oversight long into the future,” said Deborah Gordon, senior principal at RMI’s Climate Intelligence Program. “Even if the operators can successfully stop gas from being wasted and lost, their extra-heavy resources in the Orinoco Belt will remain major sources of CO₂ pollution.”

Read the full story, including why small companies may be more interested in operating in Venezuela — and why that might lead to more emissions.

Eyes in the sky

The number of verified cases where warnings from the UN International Methane Emissions Observatory have prompted methane releases to be curtailed. The observatory uses satellites to detect plumes of the greenhouse gas.

Some cold water

“There’s so much magical thinking, that we can go in and make everything right.”

Samantha Gross

Director, Brookings Institution’s Energy Security and Climate Initiative

Methane leaks are just one of the manifold infrastructure issues in Venezuela that will make any attempt to modernize the industry a costly challenge.

Meta’s nuclear might

By Will Wade and Riley Griffin

A Meta Platforms Inc. data center in Ashburn, Virginia, US Photographer: Lexi Critchett/Bloomberg

Meta Platforms Inc. agreed to a series of electricity deals for its data centers that will make it the biggest buyer of nuclear power among its hyperscaler peers.

The agreements could end up totaling more than 6 gigawatts, enough to power a city of about 5 million homes. The deals show how Big Tech’s scramble to lock in electric supplies has yet to slow amid a fierce industry battle for dominance in artificial intelligence.

Meta said earlier today it will purchase electricity from three existing Vistra Corp. plants and support several small reactors that Sam Altman-backed Oklo Inc. and Bill Gates-backed TerraPower LLC are planning to build over the next decade. Those deals follow a separate June agreement to get energy from a Constellation Energy Corp. nuclear site.

Nuclear projects often take a decade to develop and build, whereas data centers can be operational far quicker, creating a more urgent need for energy.

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com and subscribe for more reads on how artificial intelligence is pitting clean energy, nuclear and fossil fuels against each other.

This week’s Zero

US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse joins Akshat Rathi to discuss why America is acting like a petro bully, how countries can resist an increasingly aggressive Trump administration and why Democrats are making a mistake by shying away from talking about climate action.

Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.

Washington Diary

US President Donald Trump Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/CNP

On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the US from a long list of international organizations, including two pivotal climate bodies. That includes the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which oversees annual climate talks, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which publishes gold-standard science reports every few years.
The US is also pulling out of the Green Climate Fund, which was established in 2015 to support climate projects in developing countries. Since its creation, the fund has approved almost $20 billion for hundreds of projects. The GCF was created to support the objectives of the UNFCCC.
The Trump administration is suing two California cities in an attempt to block laws that restrict the use of natural gas in new buildings. The complaint alleges that ordinances in the Bay Area cities of Morgan Hill and Petaluma violate a 1975 law.
The US Supreme Court is in the process of deciding whether to hear a litmus-test case for states and cities that sue energy companies seeking climate damages. The court is expected to take or turn down the case soon.
Congress just provided a lifeline to Energy Star, a government-run program that saves homeowners billions of dollars annually, after the Trump administration targeted it for elimination.

More from Green

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presents the new guidelines. Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg

At the top of the new US food pyramid are a bright red steak and a packet of ground beef. That reflects the new US dietary guidelines’ emphasis on animal proteins. Plant-based sources of protein like almonds and peanuts are tucked farther down, and whole grains appear at the bottom.

The new recommendations, released Wednesday by the US Department of Health and Human Services and the US Department of Agriculture, are focused on health, but they also have implications for the climate. Beef is responsible for 20 times more greenhouse gas emissions per gram of protein than beans, peas and lentils.

“If someone did care about environment or climate change, one would have a hard time signing onto these new dietary guidelines,” said Walter Willett, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Read the full story on the hidden climate problem in the new guidelines.

Bill Gates says he’s optimistic about tackling climate change despite the Trump administration’s setbacks. Still, he warned that “market forces” aren’t enough to speed the energy transition along and more government help is needed to scale clean tech.

Clean energy stocks keep rallying. The S&P Global Clean Energy Transition Index, tracked by more than $5 billion in exchange-traded fund assets, has risen over 3% in the first few trading sessions of the year, and its WilderShares peer has climbed more than 8%.

Photo finish

A train on an empty platform at Buxton train station following Storm Goretti Photographer: Anthony Devlin/Bloomberg

Storm Goretti lashed England and France with hurricane-force winds, causing widespread disruption as it swept through northwest Europe and cut power to hundreds of thousands of homes. The storm could dump as much as 30 centimeters (12 inches) of snow across western and central England, the UK’s Met Office said. The storm hit a region already reeling from an Arctic blast that brought plunging temperatures and soaring heating demand.