The Government of Venezuela has announced important investment agreements with multinational companies over the past two weeks to boost its oil and gas production. The signed commitments, which tend to reverse years of isolation, have generated a small celebration within the ruling Chavismo, which is in need of resources to address a severe inflationary and production crisis.
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The announcements recently formalized by British Petroleum, Shell, or Schlumberger have been in the works for months and are concretized under the framework of U.S. tutelage in the country, effective since last January 3, when former president Nicolás Maduro was captured by U.S. soldiers in Caracas.
The multinationals Shell, British Petroleum, and the firms XRG, from the United Arab Emirates, and UCC Holding, from Qatar, have agreed on a work schedule with the government of Delcy Rodríguez to exploit the “offshore” gas fields of Loran, located in the Deltana Platform, in eastern Venezuela. This is a large gas reservoir on the maritime border with the island of Trinidad that had plans for million-dollar investments but had been shelved due to the crisis in the Venezuelan sector.
The first exploitation phase was awarded to Shell in June of last year. In phase 2 of the block, the consortium formed by BP and the Emirati and Qatari companies enters. The goal of this entire operation, according to sources close to the Venezuelan government, is to start exporting gas to Europe.
Although it has the largest reserves in Latin America, Venezuela is a medium gas producer, the sixth in the region (behind Argentina, Trinidad, Brazil, Bolivia, and Mexico), with about 31 million cubic meters per year. Part of that production is associated gas from oil extraction.
The most ambitious gas production expansion projects became dead letters during the government of Hugo Chávez and his oil minister, Rafael Ramírez, amid waste and corruption. Venezuela’s current gas production represents only 10% of the regional total.
In the oil sector, Production Sharing Contracts were announced with the U.S. corporations Hunt Oil and Crossover, and a framework alliance with the U.S.-French consortium Schlumberger, a contractor that also carries out integrated studies of oil wells. There is a memorandum of understanding, and some sources estimate future investments from these operations at 2 billion dollars.
The arrival of these companies breaks with a static outlook in terms of foreign investment in oil and gas in the country during Nicolás Maduro’s time. A context that was almost exclusively dominated by the presence of Chevron, the Spanish Repsol, and the Italian Eni fighting to obtain some additional license to maintain operations.
“Venezuela not only shows the world its vast oil and gas reserves but also the contractual mechanisms that allow converting those reserves into surface barrels,” said Paula Henao, Minister of Hydrocarbons, who closed the Empowering Venezuela forum in Houston at a meeting before the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. The presence of a Bolivarian revolution official at an event to gauge oil investments for Venezuela in Houston was a completely inconceivable episode before January 3, 2026.
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“What is truly important in terms of international investments is happening in gas,” clarifies Francisco Monaldi, an economist specialized in oil and a financial analyst. “Without a doubt, it is good news. Some are agreements negotiated years ago already with Shell. In Trinidad, there is a gas field on the other side of the border — Manatí, which is the same field —; they have developed the production chains for their petrochemical projects. Shell has been working with Trinidad for some time. The business with Venezuela would be very attractive because it is covered by the Gas Law, which has lower royalties and encourages private investment, and because on the Venezuelan side, no major investments are needed; there is installed capacity. All the gas will be monetized via Trinidad.”
Monaldi sees the oil outlook as more opaque: companies have not fully migrated to the new legal framework, “there are many uncertainties, and operational contracts have been signed that are unclear, leaving enormous discretion to the state. PDVSA has negotiated contracts in detail with private companies. The CPPH (Hydrocarbon Production Sharing Contract) of Hunt Oil and Crossover is the first signed under the new law.”
Alejandro Grisanti, managing partner of the firm Ecoanalítica and international financial advisor, states that the national oil sector will have a role in the country’s future growth rates but warns that it is not yet very high. “What is certain is that international oil and gas investment has been reactivated in Venezuela. It is being channeled to those wells that can achieve maximum production increase with a small investment. Fields that had been inactive.”
Grisanti says that in the medium term, much deeper investments will be necessary to expand oil production and return it to its former levels, but he thinks that the development of political circumstances will accelerate these processes. Grisanti estimates a 5-point GDP growth for 2026 (despite the earthquake), and positive double-digit rates from 2027 onwards, for a few years. “We foresee a growth of 200,000 barrels per day each year for the country at this pace,” he adds. Venezuela currently produces just over 1.2 million barrels of oil per day, far from the three million of the good times.
Grisanti — who foresees the arrival of capital soon — heavily conditions recovery rates on the possibility that a transition to democracy with free elections is finally realized. “If there is no transition, local oil production will have a ceiling of 2.5 million barrels per day in a few years. But if political change is achieved, it could reach up to four million barrels per day in not much time.”
Venezuelan capital, dispossessed
While these agreements are being finalized, a national capital company, Delta Finance, owned by Oswaldo Cisneros — a 40% shareholder of the mixed company PetroDelta — denounced that it has been “stripped of its assets and had its rights to carry out primary oil exploitation activities revoked through a sanctioning procedure.” Cisneros’s company complains that its participation in the oil fields of Tucupita, Bombal, Uracoa, El Isleño, Temblador, and El Salto, in the east of the country, with usage rights until 2042 “have now been granted to the company Pacific Coast Energy Company.”
Pacific Coast Energy Company is an unknown U.S. company in the local context, whose CEO is executive Klaus Hasbro. The Venezuelan state argues that PetroDelta has failed to meet its exploration and infrastructure obligations, something the company denies and says it is willing to prove.
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