AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado speaks at the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, a day after meeting with President Donald Trump and members of Congress, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026.
The Nobel Prize-winning Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is scheduled to speak at a Houston energy conference on Tuesday, addressing her “country’s transition toward a stable, market-based economy and a globally competitive energy sector,” according to the conference.
Machado will speak in a seminar at S&P Global’s CERAWeek conference called “The Future of Venezuela,” alongside S&P Global Energy senior vice president Carlos Pascual.
CERAWeek, which lasts from March 23-27 at the George R. Brown Convention Center, is an annual conference focused on the energy industry and what energy providers can expect. This year’s conference is themed “Convergence and Competition: Energy, Technology and Geopolitics,” and will focus on “the challenges ahead for energy security, power demand, markets, infrastructure, supply chains, policy directions and the advance of technology including AI – and what this means for all aspects of the industry and beyond.”
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Other speakers expected to attend include U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright; Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum; and the CEOs of Shell, Aramco, Chevron and other natural gas companies.
The U.S. military action in Venezuela and the ongoing war in Iran and the Middle East is sure to loom over the discussions of energy policy at the conference.
Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025 for her advocacy for a democracy in Venezuela. In January, Machado gave her physical peace prize to President Donald Trump following the ouster of Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela.