>>514912735
Venezuela has not been a productive or profitable oil exporter in decades.
The stupid oil argument has always been a midwit refuge. The US has one of the largest oil reserves in the world and is a notable exporter, but their oil is expensive to extract. Usually, the US benefits from high gas prices because it means their own extraction and refining industry can be profitable.
OPEC produces oil more cheaply and thus has an outsized impact on the price of oil globally. They can afford to sell oil at a much lower price than the US, and can overproduce in order to flood the market, drive prices down and put pressure on oil producers like the US or Russia who rely more on international prices being relatively high.
The only time the reverse was ever true was during the 1973 oil crisis, when OPEC embargoed a bunch of western countries for extremely islamic reasons. The sudden drop in available oil triggered a short-term price shock. Markets are geared towards equilibrium and any sudden change can trigger shock. It's not that the US didn't have enough oil available, but that it produced a specific amount to avoid flooding the market, and when the market shifted it would take time to increase their production to match, but by the time they increase that production the political situation has passed and there's no more demand for the higher production. Thus it's simply cheaper to just ride out the price shock.
The US has nothing to gain financially from taking Iraq's oil nor Venezuela's extremely unproductive oil industry. All of the world's major oil-producing nations are US allies with their national defense heavily subsidized by US equipment and foreign policy. It already has about as much influence over the world's oil production as it possibly could without directly annexing the Arabian Peninsula. There's no need to waste time faffing about with the Vuvuzelan jungle monkeys.