Energy stocks climbed on Monday, fueled by hopes that President Donald Trump’s plan to tap Venezuela’s sprawling oil reserves will be carried out, following the capture of deposed leader Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces.
Shares of Chevron surged as much as 10% at one point, before trading throughout the morning around 5% higher. Chevron is the only U.S. oil company currently operating in and exporting oil from Venezuela.
The price of oil see-sawed overnight, but as of Monday morning, it was trading nearly 2% higher. The price of both U.S. crude oil, known as West Texas Intermediate or WTI, and internationally based Brent crude rose more than 1 dollar.
More broadly, investors did not react to the upheaval in Venezuela by selling stocks, as they have in previous times of sudden geopolitical uncertainty.
On the contrary, the S&P 500 jumped 0.7% and the Nasdaq Composite rose 1% by mid-morning.
Energy was one of the best performing S&P sectors so far in the day, but the financials and consumer discretionary sectors also rallied.
Internationally, markets climbed as traders likely breathed a sigh of relief that the situation in Venezuela had not deteriorated further. Indexes in Germany, the UK, Italy, Australia, Japan and Hong Kong all rose in the first trading session since the administration’s move in Venezuela.
Monday marked the first substantial trading session since traders and investors returned from the holidays.
The future potential for U.S. companies to be able to return to Venezuela’s oil fields for the first time in decades also boosted the share prices of Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips by around 3%.
Shares of firms that supply services to oil giants also jumped. Baker Hughes rose 5%, SLB rose 12%, and Halliburton soared 10%.
Venezuela currently sits on the largest oil reserves in the world, surpassing even those of major oil producing nations like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Russia.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country,” Trump said on Saturday at a press conference.
But experts warn that accomplishing anything near a return to full capacity oil production in Venezuela will likely take years.
“Venezuela’s current oil exports are small in the global context, and any effort to develop Venezuela’s world-leading oil reserves at scale will necessarily be a long-term story due to poor infrastructure,” Evercore ISI analyst Matthew Aks wrote in a note to clients over the weekend.
Venezuela has been “pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been,” Trump said in his Saturday remarks.
U.S. sanctions have contributed to the years long decline of Venezuela’s oil infrastructure and the nation’s output. It was unclear Monday whether the Trump administration’s plans to revitalize the oil industry include lifting longstanding sanctions and Trump’s blockade of oil tankers leaving the country.
The geopolitical uncertainty Monday boosted the value of precious metals, known as “safe havens” for investors. Gold rose 2% and silver traded higher by more than 4%.
The U.S. dollar also rose on the back of the administration’s action in Venezuela, ticking higher by about 0.4%.
