Chevron confirmed it will expand operations in Venezuela after President Donald Trump announced a deal to develop the country’s oil reserves and give the Pentagon a stake in the profits. That’s the core of it: a U.S. oil giant, a White House push, and the military apparatus getting a cut of the spoils from Venezuela’s underground wealth.
Chevron, the only U.S. oil company with a major presence in Venezuela, said it has been assigned additional acreage in the Orinoco Belt, where it already has active operations. The company plans to invest more than $7 billion over the next five years and aims to more than double its current production to about 600,000 barrels a day. The money is huge. So is the control.
Who Gets the Oil
CEO Mike Wirth said in a prepared statement, “Chevron’s history in Venezuela spans more than a century, and our expanded position reflects our confidence in the country’s deep resource potential.” That history runs through 1923, when Chevron’s presence in Venezuela began. It now stretches into a fresh round of corporate expansion under a deal tied to Trump’s administration and the Pentagon’s share of the profits.
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. The numbers are staggering, and they sit beneath a country whose energy infrastructure is severely degraded and whose daily production is just over 1 million barrels under international sanctions.
Chevron says it will pour more capital into the Orinoco Belt while the country’s oil system remains in disarray. Analysts have warned that Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure will require years of restoration work and tens of billions of dollars to resuscitate. Amy Jaffe, director of the Global Energy, Climate, and Sustainability Lab at New York University, said in an email, “It could take 2 to 4 years to get new greenfield facilities online in the Orinoco region. Other places where there is no pipeline and other kinds of support infrastructure could take longer.”
What the Officials Call Peace
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright attended a ceremony in Caracas in which Chevron, Italian oil company Eni and other energy companies signed agreements with the Venezuelan government. Wright said, “President Trump’s mission in Venezuela is straightforward. The mission is to bring peace, freedom, opportunity and prosperity to the people of Venezuela,” and added, “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.”
Wright also said Wednesday the deal is “a massive win” for both countries. He said, “Because what it’s going to do is take resources that are underground, not helping anyone, and invest capital and money and technology and bring them to the surface to better the lives of Venezuelans, better supply energy to Americans.” The language is polished. The hierarchy isn’t.
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. The agreement has drawn skepticism from energy experts who say it will take years to revive Venezuela’s oil industry, which has been in disarray after years of neglect. Questions also remain about whether Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, 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.
Who Decides, Who Pays
Ian Vásquez, vice president for international studies at the Cato Institute, wrote that Venezuela’s constitution requires arrangements like this to be approved by the National Assembly, which has not happened. He wrote, “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,” and added, “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.”
The ruling party-controlled National Assembly expressed support for the agreement during its Tuesday session, but lawmakers held no debate or vote to approve it. That’s the kind of consent the powerful like best: managed, scripted, and empty.
Trump has eyed Venezuela’s oil since the January capture of then-President Nicolás Maduro and has pressed to get U.S. businesses back into the country. He said in January, “We have Exxon going in, we have Chevron going in. We have our big oil companies going in.” He suggested again on Monday that other U.S. oil majors were preparing for a return, though there is no evidence of that beyond Chevron. Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods said in January that Venezuela was “uninvestable,” and an Exxon spokesman said this week that “nothing has changed.”
Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976 and created the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. A second nationalization came in 2007, when President Hugo Chávez pushed foreign oil companies into state-controlled joint ventures and seized the assets of companies that refused. Chevron agreed to a joint venture. Others, including Exxon and ConocoPhillips, refused, and Venezuela took their assets.
Trump has said the agreement with Venezuela would “substantially lower” gasoline prices in the U.S. The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline jumped overnight to $4.12, according to AAA, which said that was 93 cents more than it cost at this point last year. The people at the pump keep paying while the state, the companies, and the Pentagon carve up the future.