The El Palito refinery in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, in December.Matias Delacroix/The Associated Press

Shawn Barber is a retired foreign-service officer and ambassador. He is the former head of the economic security task force at Public Safety Canada.

The removal of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces Saturday morning ended one of the Western Hemisphere’s longest-running political standoffs – and opened a question with direct consequences for Canada’s economic security.

If the Venezuelan oil sector, with the help of U.S. energy giants, can be revitalized so that Venezuela once again becomes a major heavy-crude exporter, what will the implications be for Canada’s oil patch?

Canada’s role as the largest energy supplier to the U.S. market is unlikely to be threatened in the short to medium term by the events now unfolding in Venezuela. But the potential for those events to reshape U.S. oil markets in the long term is real. For a trading nation like Canada, protecting our economic security means this is a risk we cannot ignore.

What the U.S. attack on Venezuela could mean for oil and Canadian crude exports

During the late 1990s, it was Venezuela, not Canada, that was the largest exporter of crude oil to the United States. For decades,........

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