Chevron plans to significantly expand its operations in Venezuela, the U.S. oil giant said on Wednesday, taking yet another step to broaden the U.S. sphere of influence in the South American country.
The Houston-based company, already Venezuela’s largest private oil producer, said it would more than double its production in the country over the next five years to 600,000 barrels a day. That represents over half of Venezuela’s current output.
Chevron, which is gaining access to new areas in the oil-rich Orinoco Belt region, plans to invest more than $7 billion in Venezuela in that period.
The company announced its plans days after President Trump said his administration was pursuing a highly unusual partnership with a different oil company that would give the U.S. government a direct hand in extracting oil on foreign soil.
The two deals are separate, but both advance Mr. Trump’s goal of exerting much more control over Venezuela’s energy industry after U.S. forces captured the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January.
“Our expanded position reflects our confidence in the country’s deep resource potential and its ability to compete for investment within our portfolio for decades,” Chevron’s chief executive, Mike Wirth, said in a statement.
A signing ceremony is scheduled for later on Wednesday at the presidential palace in Caracas. Mr. Maduro’s successor, Delcy Rodríguez, and the U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, are expected to attend.
Under pressure from the Trump administration, Venezuela has been making changes to attract American companies and other foreign investors roughly two decades after the country nationalized the oil industry. In January, the country’s National Assembly voted to give foreign companies much greater control over their Venezuelan operations.
Chevron, in turn, has been steadily expanding in the Orinoco Belt, including by agreeing earlier this year to trade assets with Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela.
As of earlier this summer, Chevron was producing around 280,000 barrels of oil a day in Venezuela and expected to increase that by up to 50 percent by the end of 2028, said Eimear Bonner, the company’s chief financial officer. That output is shared with the Venezuelan state oil company, its partner there.
Chevron pumps around 4 million barrels of oil and natural gas a day globally at an estimated cost of more than $18 billion in capital spending this year.
Chevron is unique among big American oil producers for remaining in Venezuela after the country forced foreign companies to accept smaller stakes in their projects when it nationalized the industry. Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips left after refusing to accept those changes.
Chevron’s decision to stay — which looked at times like a very bad bet — now appears to be paying off. The company has been in a prime position as the Trump administration has sought to carve out a bigger role for U.S. companies in Venezuela.
That said, the Trump administration’s new partnership, which is with an influential and divisive Venezuelan businessman, Alejandro Betancourt López, may complicate Chevron’s standing in the country by elevating a competitor. Mr. Betancourt’s family controls Venezuela’s second-largest private oil producer, North American Blue Energy Partners.
Under the deal announced by the administration, the U.S. government would receive the option to acquire an ownership stake of 35 percent in the parent company of North American Blue Energy Partners. The United States would also secure preferential access to the oil that the company produced and considerable say over its corporate governance.
