Business

Chevron to expand operations in Venezuela

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil giant Chevron confirmed that it will expand operations in Venezuela after President Donald Trump announced an ambitious deal to develop the nation’s oil reserves and give the Pentagon a stake in the profits.

Chevron, the only U.S. oil company with a major presence in Venezuela, said Wednesday that it has been assigned additional acreage in the Orinoco Belt, where it has active operations. The company plans to invest more than $7 billion over the next five years, with the goal of more than doubling its current production to about 600,000 barrels a day.

“Chevron’s history in Venezuela spans more than a century, and our expanded position reflects our confidence in the country’s deep resource potential,” CEO Mike Wirth said in a prepared statement.

Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven reserves, totaling more than 303 billion barrels of crude oil, according to OPEC’s 2025 Annual Statistical Bulletin. Saudi Arabia is a distant second with 267 billion barrels.

Yet because Venezuela’s energy infrastructure is severely degraded and the nation is operating under international sanctions, its daily production is just over 1 million barrels, compared with the 10 million to 11 million barrels that Saudi Arabia produces each day. The U.S. produces almost 14 million barrels per day.

Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, has had a presence in Venezuela since 1923.

“President Trump’s mission in Venezuela is straightforward. The mission is to bring peace freedom opportunity and prosperity to the people of Venezuela,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Wednesday in Caracas, Venezuela. “I believe that deals signed today ... are critical in starting the ball rolling on peace opportunity and prosperity for everyone in Venezuela.”

The White House confirmed Monday that it is partnering with North American Blue Energy Partners as part of Trump’s push to tap into Venezuela’s oil industry.

Yet the agreement has been met with skepticism from energy experts who say it will take years to revive Venezuela’s oil industry, which is in disarray after years of neglect.

There are also questions about whether Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez has the authority to give Chevron 100-year rights over 17 oil fields with reserves of 65 billion barrels -- and whether future Venezuelan or American administrations would overturn the agreement.

Venezuela’s constitution states that arrangements like the one that the United States announced this week must be approved by the National Assembly, which has not happened, wrote Ian Vásquez, vice president for international studies at the Cato Institute.

“The deal lacks legitimacy since it was agreed to with a dictatorship that has clung to power for decades through violence and by committing what was probably the largest electoral fraud in Latin American history in 2024,” Vásquez wrote. “The agreement was also reached under overwhelming pressure, military and otherwise, from the United States. As such, any future Venezuelan democracy will question the deal, thus undermining confidence in the current arrangement.”

Trump has eyed Venezuela’s oil since the capture of Nicolás Maduro and has pressed to get U.S. businesses back into the country. “We have Exxon going in, we have Chevron going in. We have our big oil companies going in,” he said in January.

He suggested again on Monday that other U.S. oil majors were preparing for a return, though other than Chevron, there is no evidence of that.

Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods said in January that Venezuela was ” uninvestable.” An Exxon spokesman said this week that “nothing has changed.”

Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976 and created the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. A second nationalization occurred in 2007, when President Hugo Chávez pushed foreign oil companies into state-controlled joint ventures and seized the assets of companies that refused. Chevron agreed to a joint venture. Others, including Exxon and ConocoPhillips, refused, and Venezuela took their assets.