Chevron is investing $7 billion to double oil production in Venezuela

Chevron plans to invest $7 billion over the next five years to more than double oil production in Venezuela, according to a statement from the company itself. This is currently the largest financial commitment under the program to revive the Latin American country’s oil industry, which was initiated by the U.S. government, Bloomberg notes.

Chevron shares were virtually unchanged in trading on September 2—over the past five days, they have risen by about 5% amid rising oil prices.

Chevron has been granted the right to develop two major oil fields in the Carabobo region of Venezuela’s Orinoco Oil Belt, according to a company statement. The Carabobo 1 and Carabobo-2-South-A fields are located near Petroindependencia, a joint venture between Chevron and the Venezuelan state-owned corporation PDVSA, in which the U.S. company’s subsidiary holds a 49% stake. This is a region where the bulk of Venezuela’s vast reserves of extra-heavy crude oil are concentrated, CNBC explains.

Overall, Chevron expects to produce about 600,000 barrels of oil per day in Venezuela by 2031, more than double the current level, according to a Chevron press release. According to the company, the country’s rich resource potential will remain intact for “decades,” and total costs are expected to be less than $20 per barrel.

An additional 300,000 barrels per day over the next five years represents a nearly 30 percent increase in Venezuela’s current total production, which stands at about 1.1 million barrels per day, notes Bloomberg.

The agency calls the deal the largest investment by an oil major in the country since January, when the U.S. military detained former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

At the same time, U.S. President Donald Trump announced on August 28 the “largest oil deal in history” with Venezuela. Under the deal, Venezuela is to transfer a large stake in the Latin American country’s oil reserves to the U.S. government. Bloomberg reports that this week, the U.S. government was also conducting separate negotiations to acquire a 35% stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, a U.S . private company that holds 100-year concessions for 17 Venezuelan oil fields.

Until now, negotiations on oil deals in Venezuela have mainly involved small private companies, Bloomberg explains. Chevron’s competitors—ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips—left the country in the mid-2000s after their assets were nationalized. Chevron, however, remained in Venezuela after negotiating terms that allowed it to continue production, but its operations in the country have been limited by U.S. sanctions in recent decades.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor