estimates<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n\n Yet when oil companies decide to invest in far-flung drilling projects, they need confidence about what the operating environment there will look like years, if not decades, into the future. These days it\u2019s hard to feel solid about Venezuela\u2019s form of government and institutions weeks from now, let alone years.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cJust because there are oil reserves \u2013 even the largest in the world \u2013 doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re necessarily going to produce there,\u201d another industry source told CNN. \u201cThis isn\u2019t like standing up a food truck operation.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n This source said the Trump administration put \u201crhetoric before reality\u201d and stressed political stability is \u201cparamount\u201d when companies weigh investing overseas.\n <\/p>\n
\n Years of underinvestment, economic crisis and international exile have left Venezuela\u2019s oil infrastructure in a state of disrepair.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cVenezuela is broke. It doesn\u2019t have any money. The national oil company is in disarray. It can barely feed its people,\u201d said Luisa Palacios, a former Citgo chairwoman who was born and raised in Venezuela.\n <\/p>\n
\n Just to keep Venezuela\u2019s oil production flat at 1.1 million barrels per day \u2013 roughly equal to what North Dakota currently produces \u2013 would require about $53 billion of investment over the next 15 years, according to estimates published Monday by consulting firm Rystad Energy.\n <\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/gettyimages-1245285899.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n However, to return Venezuela to its glory days of 3 million barrels per day from the late 1990s, total oil and gas capital spending would need to reach a staggering $183 billion through 2040, according to Rystad\u2019s analysis.\n <\/p>\n
\n That huge figure reflects not only Venezuela\u2019s aging infrastructure but the fact that most of its oil is considered \u201cheavy,\u201d a blend of crude that is harder and more expensive to refine and process than the lighter oil found in the Permian Basin of West Texas.\n <\/p>\n
\n Crude is also cheap right now. Oil prices plunged by 20% last year \u2013 their worst since 2020.\n <\/p>\n
\n Cheap oil is great for consumers, driving down gasoline prices to four-year lows. However, that same low-price environment makes oil CEOs, and their shareholders, reluctant to gamble on risky projects.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe idea that there will be an overnight restart of the Venezuelan oil industry is just unrealistic. It\u2019s all very premature,\u201d said Doug Leggate, Wolfe Research\u2019s managing director of integrated oil, refiners and exploration & production.\n <\/p>\n
\n Of course, it\u2019s possible the Trump administration could try to overcome these concerns by making guarantees designed to incentivize US investment in Venezuela. It\u2019s too early to say whether such incentives will be offered.\n <\/p>\n
Chevron could stand to gain<\/p>\n
\n In any case, analysts and industry executives say only a select few US oil companies have the deep pockets and knowhow to develop production in Venezuela.\n <\/p>\n
\n Chevron is at the top of that list because the Houston-based company is the only major Western oil giant that has kept a significant footprint in Venezuela throughout decades of upheaval.\n <\/p>\n
![\"View](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/gettyimages-1245314721.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n \u201cChevron is the best positioned among US oil companies \u2013 by far,\u201d said Francisco Monaldi, a fellow in Latin American energy policy at Rice University.\n <\/p>\n
\n Chevron currently produces about 150,000 barrels per day in Venezuela, according to Rystad, operating under a sanctions license the Trump administration recently extended.\n <\/p>\n
\n Chevron declined to answer questions about its level of interest in ramping up production in Venezuela now that President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro has been removed from power.\n <\/p>\n
Exxon and Conoco are owed billions<\/p>\n
\n ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, two other major US oil companies, also have the expertise and balance sheets to help revive Venezuela.\n <\/p>\n
\n Yet both companies may still be scarred from their prior experiences in Venezuela.\n <\/p>\n
\n Former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez nationalized Exxon and Conoco\u2019s oil assets around 2006. While Chevron decided to stay and work with Caracas, Exxon and Conoco left and had their assets seized.\n <\/p>\n
\n Conoco is still trying to recover an estimated $12 billion from the prior nationalization of its Venezuela assets, while ExxonMobil is seeking to recover almost $2 billion, according to Reuters<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n\n \u201cVenezuela is the country that has seen the most expropriation cases brought against it. This means the starting risk premium there is very high,\u201d said Palacios, the former Citgo executive who is now interim director of research and managing director of energy transition finance at Columbia University\u2019s Center on Global Energy Policy.\n <\/p>\n
\n Exxon is focused on developing blockbuster oil discoveries in nearby Guyana, which in the span of a few years has gone from almost no oil production to surpassing that of Venezuela.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cVenezuela is not the only game in town \u2013 not even in Latin America,\u201d Palacios said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 President Donald Trump may have made a major miscalculation about Venezuela\u2019s oil. Trump has expressed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":{"0":"post-390073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}