On January 3rd of this year, a brief U.S. military operation ended Nicolás Maduro's rule in Venezuela, setting in motion what the Trump administration frames as a fundamental realignment of Western Hemisphere energy. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, speaking in Dallas, described the intervention not as an end in itself but as the opening of a door — one through which American capital, infrastructure, and geopolitical ambition are now flowing. Venezuela holds roughly one-fifth of the world's proven oil reserves yet produces a fraction of its potential, and the administration is betting that energ