Canadian Oil Investors Call Trump’s Venezuela Strategy "Dead Wrong"
While Washington pivots to Caracas, smart money is betting big on the Canadian oil patch.
Editorial Team (ET)January 12, 2026
If you listened to the political chatter coming out of Washington last week, the Canadian energy sector was supposed to be shaking in its boots. Following the dramatic capture of Venezuela’s president, the White House signaled a grand pivot, suggesting that the U.S. had finally secured the leverage needed to wean itself off Northern crude by tapping into the massive reserves of the South American nation. It was a bold geopolitical narrative, but according to veteran money managers, the math simply doesn’t add up.
While headlines heralded a new era of energy diversification, investors were quietly doing something else entirely: buying the dip.
Cole Smead and Eric Nuttall, two prominent portfolio managers, spent last week snapping up shares of Canadian oil companies as the sector wobbled on the news. Their thesis is simple and cutting. The notion that American oil giants will suddenly rush into a destabilized Venezuela to replace stable Canadian barrels is, in Nuttall’s words, "steeped in profound ignorance."
