When the executive branch of the United States government authorized the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in early January, it was the latest turn in a series of escalating events between the two nations. The Venezuelan President’s capture drew the ire of both the international community and some members of Congress because of its impact on national sovereignty and the future of the rules-based international order.

This outcry overlooked another consequential issue: the growing role of corporations in shaping the United States’ domestic and foreign policy decisions. It is a trend that carries significant governance implications for countries on the receiving end of any such interventions.

Immediately after the operation, President Donald Trump defended it as occurring in the U.S. oil industry’s interests. He also indicated that the White House had been in touch with oil companies prior to the operation. When combined with the White House’s meeting with key energy companies to discuss investing in Venezuela following the raid, these events point to an unmistakable reality. U.S. oil companies that enter Venezuela’s oil sector under unstable conditions, will be seen not only as investors in the Country’s energy infrastructure, but as political actors and co-creators of governance in a deeply fragmented and contested political landscape. This is a pattern, not speculation.

What awaits these companies in such a turbulent landscape? My research on Nigeria’s oil-producing region, known as the Niger Delta, suggests that when state authority is weak or contested, energy companies end up stepping into roles that look a lot like governance—often without intending to. They become deeply embedded in the political life of the nation, and not merely in its economy. So what lessons does the Niger Delta hold for the U.S. government (and its oil companies) attempts to move into Venezuela’s energy sector directly?

A Post-Maduro Venezuela Is Not a Blank Slate

One fundamental miscalculation at the heart of post-Maduro planning is the assumption that removing a president clears a country’s political terrain. The United States might have learned from its experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan that is not the case. And in these nations, as well as in the Niger Delta, attempts to crush what forces remain almost certainly will backfire.

Venezuela is already home to multiple layers of authority beyond the formal state once headed by Maduro. First, the armed colectivos engaged in the petrol smuggling industry control neighborhoods, extort from individuals and businesses, and provide social services in exchange for loyalty. Guerilla groups such as the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (or ELN) already control criminal enterprises such as illegal mining and drug trafficking, and they have decades of experience fighting the U.S.-backed Colombian military. More informal networks in Venezuela, such as Tren de Aragua, also are tied to drug trafficking, fuel smuggling, mining, and territorial control and remain deeply embedded in local economies.

These actors—formal or informal—are not epiphenomenal; they are constitutive actors in national governance. Any foreign company seeking to operate in Venezuela’s vast oil reserves must necessarily contend with them directly or indirectly. Ignoring them will not make them disappear.

Any significant extractive investment will intersect with such actors, as evidenced in contexts similar to those in Venezuela, such as the Niger Delta (my research subject), as well as in Myanmar, and Colombia. Attempts to sidestep or suppress these interests with force will only harden resistance and entrench violence and insecurity around extractive sites. Indeed, data drawn from studies in the Niger Delta and other global extractive regions show that the use of force in an attempt to crush them often fail.

When Corporations Extract and Govern

In places where politics is fragile, energy companies often become far more than economic actors. They become intertwined with the broader sociopolitical context in which they operate. Oil is rarely just an economic product. It is the bedrock upon which local communities define their identity. Energy is a sector in which powerful political actors build social capital, and the resulting competition becomes a conflict driver among multiple actors.

The oil industry as it operates in the Niger Delta demonstrates that weak or contested state authority often compels energy companies to stepping into governance-like roles. They negotiate who will receive compensation for access to land used for oil extraction. Companies decide which communities will host their facilities and infrastructure, creating significant implications for local economies. They also determine who is treated as a legitimate local leader, and shape how security is organized and how conflict is handled.

These seemingly operational decisions pull companies into the center of local political life. In the Niger Delta, for instance, energy firms became de facto governors, stabilizing violence-prone areas while sidelining rival ethnic groups. In the process, their actions fuel resentment and cycles of violence among multiple competing formal and informal actors and local communities.

If U.S. oil companies enter Venezuela under the banner of economic recovery or stabilization, as the U.S. government has alluded, they are likely to inherit both the same power and the same risks.

Capacity Versus Costs

U.S. oil companies have the technical capacity and the ability to mobilize capital to invest successfully in Venezuela, despite the short-term volatility created by the Maduro operation. Yet the assumption that economic entry can be separated from political responsibility is perhaps the greatest danger.

In politically fragmented contexts, this assumption rarely holds up. In Venezuela, this strict separation between economic influence and political power will be challenging for companies whose entry into the sector is preceded by a daring mission that captured a sitting authoritarian President.

As in the Niger Delta and elsewhere, operational decisions made by businesses can become dangerously political, inevitably redistributing power and determining winners and losers in economic and political terms. Energy companies are compelled to reshape local authority, create factions, and pull them into the center of political contestation.

Venezuela will hardly prove different, but brings an added layer of risk. The existing presence of armed actors, guerrilla groups, and criminal networks already makes for a complex mix, without accounting for the complications of a national government that has run the country like a petrostate, and maintaining a number of influential political actors and loyalists having vested interests.

For U.S oil companies, the lessons from the Niger Delta and elsewhere are about political realism rather than corporate social responsibility. Investments in Venezuela’s oil sector will entail inheriting governance functions and conflict risks that energy firms cannot outsource to the state or manage solely through coercion.

Arguably, U.S. energy companies are used to dealing with these challenges. Several factors make Venezuela more difficult, however. The sheer size of its oil reserves and the damage wreaked by years of U.S sanctions are readily apparent. And Venezuela boasts a number of other obstacles clustered together: the pervasive integration of extractive revenues with illicit systems, a weak governance system, cross-border illicit networks, and a corrupt and complicit government.

Venezuela’s domestic issues mean that foreign energy firms cannot outsource governance to the state, or manage local resistance through coercive security contracts alone. Instead, they will be drawn into the governance vacuum, navigating and negotiating by necessity with a plurality of formal and informal actors, and facing attendant costs and risks that are both structural and enduring. Firms that enter the market and fail to recognize these facts are likely to find themselves governing by default—and paying the price.