reatened. As Le Billon mentions, “The resource dimension of foreign military intervention can also be associated with dilemmas between economic interests and strategic objectives,” (Le Billon 2004), and thus for some states, conflict is the best course of action if determined. Therefore, if the economic interests of foreign powers in petrostates are at risk from civil unrest, there is likely to be a conflict on a domestic level as these states promote the interests of opposing groups within domestic politics to protect their own interests, namely the energy resource of oil and the lucrative profits that could be lost. This is the case as Realism determines that as states are power-maximisers, the risk to energy security could become a threat to national security, so actions must be taken to ensure that it does not. In Venezuela, conflict is inevitable as energy resources become the most significant factor of discourse. Venezuela is the holds the largest reserves of oil in the world, with an estimated amount of 300,878 million barrels of oil untapped (Dillinger 2019) however, it is only the world’s fifteenth largest producer of crude oil (Trading Economics 2019). This is not because Venezuela does not have the capacity to produce its crude oil, but that the current political situation has made it unaffordable to do so. One out of four refineries work, and the state-owned Petróleos de Venezeula (PDVSA) has had to abandon the Isla refinery on the Dutch-owned island of Curacao (Jaffe 2019). Venezuela’s economy looks bleak and that has been one of the defining topics around the political unrest. Currently there is a leadership crisis that has made Venezuela into a pseudo-dictatorship. President Maduro won elections in 2018 that have been deemed unfair as they banned many opposition parties and fraudulent votes were added, however, leader of the opposition, Juan Gauido, has sworn himself in as interim President, whilst gaining much international support and recognition from many nations. However, whilst many nations recognise Gauido’s claim, Russia and China refuse to do so as they deem it to be illegal, however, according to the Washington Post, they both have deep economic investments that would be risked by supporting Gauido. According to the article, the Chinese loaned over $30 billion, “wagering that the production capacity of Venezuela’s state oil company was a sufficient guarantee for debt repayment,” (Kaplan and Penfold 2019), and Russia, through its state-owned oil company, Rosneft, provided $6.5 billion as, “Russia seized an opportunity to signal its return to the global and hemispheric stage with a symbolic move in Venezuela” (Kaplan and Penfold). The US on the other hand, has backed Gauido, publicly stating rhetoric to uphold democracy. However, upon closer inspection, this was done as it would favour US oil interests in the nation. Citgo, a US-based oil refiner, provides 9 percent of US oil production, however, 51 percent of shares are owned by PDVSA, whilst the remaining 49 percent are owned by Rosneft. There is a clear conflict of interest that could occur between the Ru>