(Oil Price) – As 2026 begins, energy markets are reacting less to supply outages than to how governments are choosing to act. The removal of Venezuela’s president, instability along the Red Sea, and rising uncertainty around Iran have altered assumptions about restraint, escalation, and control. This piece examines four locations where those changes are already influencing energy risk.
Venezuela: Decapitation Without Control
The headlining news, of course, is that Nicolás Maduro has been captured during a U.S. military and intelligence operation, removed from Venezuela, and placed in U.S. custody. President Donald Trump has said the United States intends to “run” affairs in Caracas and has not ruled out deploying U.S. troops to do so. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was named acting president, a move publicly endorsed by Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López, who then ordered nationwide military mobilization. The armed forces remain intact and under existing command. PDVSA continues operating at reduced levels, but exports and payment channels are constrained by U.S. enforcement.
Several Latin American governments have condemned the U.S. action and rejected its legitimacy. At the same time, Washington has sidelined the opposition, with Trump publicly dismissing María Corina Machado as lacking domestic support, leaving no opposition figure positioned to assume power. Over the past day, the acting administration has moderated its public language, stressing stability, dialogue, and continuity in oil operations, while continuing to reject the legality of Maduro’s seizure.
This isn’t classic regime change. It’s more like a forced transition. Maduro is gone, but the system he ran is still in place. The military command, internal security services, and senior civilian administrators remain intact, and López’s alignment with the acting leadership underscores that cohesion. The people now managing day-to-day affairs are not simply caretakers. They have been running sanctions workarounds, oil logistics, and crisis management for years.
Eurasia Group’s Top Risks 2026 argues that the United States itself is becoming “the principal source of global risk,” noting how quickly political decisions can now translate into force. Venezuela is one of the first cases where markets are seeing that dynamic play out directly.
For oil markets, the disruption is already operational. PDVSA has begun asking some joint ventures to cut output because crude is backing up and exports are harder to move. Storage limits, legal risk, and slower cargo clearance are forcing shut-ins. There is no near-term path to higher Venezuelan supply under these conditions, and the possibility of U.S. troops on the ground adds uncertainty around ports, terminals, and oilfields. Venezuela is not positioned to add barrels. It is positioned to add volatility.
Venezuela and Iran: The Precedent Question
The implications of Venezuela extend well beyond Latin America. Outside Venezuela, the capture of Maduro has focused attention on how far Washington is now willing to go once it decides a problem has to be settled. Eurasia Group describes 2026 as a “tipping point year,” and Venezuela is being interpreted now not as an exception.
From Iran’s perspective, the message is pretty clear, and there has been a very visible closing of the distance between pressure and action, all of which are designed to generate “strong man” headlines to set the stage for midterm elections. Eurasia’s Top Risks 2026 argues that the Trump administration “doesn’t want to be the world’s policeman but intends to assert direct control over America’s own backyard”.
Tehran sees Venezuela as evidence that this logic can move quickly from rhetoric to action. Iranian officials and aligned media have already framed the Maduro operation as proof that negotiations do not guarantee safety and that U.S. assurances can be reversed.
Iran’s role in oil markets is likely to become more volatile, even without a direct confrontation. Venezuela does not force Tehran’s hand, but it makes restraint harder to justify and easier to abandon if pressure builds. That widens the range of outcomes markets have to price. Small incidents, sharper rhetoric, or minor disruptions around shipping lanes start to matter more because the margin for error is thinner. Prices, freight rates, and insurance tend to react to that uncertainty early, before anything is actually shut in or blocked.
Yemen and the Red Sea: Uncertainty Without Escalation
Recent developments in Yemen have raised Red Sea risk without producing a new attack at sea. Saudi airstrikes in the south targeted positions linked to the Southern Transitional Council, a UAE-backed force that controls large stretches of the southern coastline. The strikes coincided with moves by Saudi-backed government forces to push back against recent STC gains. Fighting spilled into civilian infrastructure, including disruptions around Aden airport, and shifted security responsibilities on the ground without clarifying who is responsible for restraint along the coast. Abu Dhabi stayed out of the strikes, while its local allies held their positions.
The Houthis have stayed quiet at sea and toned down Gaza-linked rhetoric since July, but their forces remain in place and nothing has been dismantled that would limit their ability to act. No new mechanism has emerged to manage escalation or impose discipline along the shoreline. Security depends on restraint by choice, not enforcement.
For shipping, that is enough to change behavior.
The issue is not whether there was an attack yesterday, but who controls ports, who monitors coastal approaches, and who would contain an incident if one occurred. As Eurasia Group notes more broadly, fragmentation rather than shock is increasingly the dominant source of geopolitical risk. Insurers price that uncertainty. Operators route around it where they can. Yemen is not closing Bab el-Mandeb. It is making it unreliable, and unreliability is costly.
Somalia and the Horn of Africa: The Other Shore
Red Sea risk does not stop at Yemen’s coastline. It extends across the water into Somalia and the wider Horn of Africa, where control over ports, coastlines, and maritime access points is increasingly contested. Somalia’s federal government remains weak. Regional authorities operate with wide autonomy. External actors are expanding their presence. Turkey has deepened its military and economic footprint. The UAE maintains port and security relationships. Ethiopia is pressing for maritime access through Somaliland, raising tensions with Mogadishu.
Turkey has now added an energy dimension to that footprint. Ankara has begun offshore oil and gas drilling in Somali waters through state-backed entities operating under agreements that combine exploration, security cooperation, and maritime protection. This is Turkey’s first overseas deepwater campaign. Even before any discovery, the move ties potential upstream assets to security commitments in a politically fragmented environment and signals a longer-term Turkish stake along the African side of the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden system.
Bab el-Mandeb sits between two coastlines where authority is thin. On the African side, control is divided among federal institutions, regional administrations, and local power brokers. Al-Shabaab retains the ability to strike selectively, even if it is not currently targeting shipping. Foreign bases, port concessions, and security arrangements overlap without a single framework for coordination or enforcement.
For energy markets, this widens the zone of uncertainty around the Red Sea corridor. It is not a single-conflict problem, but a system bordered by fragmented states and competing external interests. Tanker operators, insurers, and navies treat it that way, adjusting routes, coverage, and costs based on the reliability of the corridor as a whole. The result is a higher baseline cost and lower predictability for moving oil, products, and LNG through one of the world’s most sensitive maritime arteries.
By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com
