Venezuelan crude is attractive to complex U.S. refiners with coking capacity, but only a subset of Gulf and East Coast plants can fully process the heavy, high-sulfur oil.

Most of the state's 15 crude oil refineries were built specifically to process the heavy sour crude that comes from Venezuela and turn into products like diesel, fuel oil and asphalt.

The highly complex refineries located on the U.S. Gulf Coast could resume processing heavy Venezuelan crude oil in the years following the capture of President Nicolás

A full-scale resumption of Venezuelan oil exports would benefit refiners in the United States and lower their fuel production costs, with the refineries capable of absorbing most of the roughly 1 million barrels per day of crude if U.

Cameroon’s Kribi refinery may come online in the second half of 2026, ahead of schedule, marking the country’s first major new oil processing project in decades and promising to cut fuel imports by nearly a third.