Chevron will expand operations in Venezuela
US oil giant confirms it has been assigned additional acreage
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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 the deals that are signed today -- tens of billions of dollars of investment, ultimately many thousands of jobs -- are critical in starting this ball rolling of peace, opportunity and prosperity for everyone in Venezuela."
The White House confirmed Monday that it is partnering with North American Blue Energy Partners, NABEP, 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 Rodriguez, has the authority to give NABEP 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 Vasquez, 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," Vasquez 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 January capture of then-President Nicolas 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 that same month.