The president in charge of Venezuela, , has announced an agreement to increase Chevron’s oil production. With these announcements, Chevron, one of the largest energy companies in the United States and the world, consolidates itself as the main investor in Venezuelan oil operations. “This agreement will allow us to make important advances in production and for the income derived from that production to go directly to the benefit of the people of Venezuela,” he assured. The Chavista leader has thanked the company for its commitment to the country “in the worst moments” and took the opportunity to demand the lifting of sanctions on the country, one of her current priorities. “It is a way to provide legal and institutional security to investors who come to Venezuela. It should be understood that it is not a passing or momentary investment,” he defended.
The agreement, announced at the Miraflores Palace, is part of the process of opening the energy sector promoted by Rodríguez since January, after the US military intervention. Since then, a good part of the strategic decisions pass through Washington, which seeks to take advantage of Venezuelan energy resources and promote the expansion of its companies in the country with the largest oil reserves in the world. The signatures—“which took days of negotiations,” Rodríguez assured—were stamped under the smiling presence of the American chargé d’affaires, Laura Dogu, and the United States Undersecretary of Energy, Kyle Haustevit.
The key to the agreement with Chevron is to benefit the delivery of a gas field that was in the hands of the company in exchange for being able to exploit an oil block, called Ayacucho 8, a huge block of extra-heavy crude oil. The field is located in the Orinoco Belt, the largest deposit in the world, a gigantic reservoir of extra-heavy crude oil of 55,000 square kilometers. The beneficiaries are the joint companies made up of Chevron and the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela.
It is now urgently looking for how to accelerate its oil production, which remains at one million barrels per day. In an interview with EL PAÍS, the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, stated that they were “a little tired of saying all the time that we are the main oil reserve” in the world. “The oil that is under the earth is of no use to anyone. On the other hand, the oil that we manage to extract, that we manage to attract investments, is oil that can be converted into hospitals, into salaries, into schools, into roads, into progress, into development, into culture, into universities…”, he explained. The money derived from oil still needs to reach the pockets of Venezuelans, something that is not yet happening.
While the ruling party – with the support of Washington – defends the search for stability and economic improvement before considering any election, the opposition insists that the calling of elections must also be a priority on Venezuela’s political agenda.
Oil is not the only sector of interest to Americans. The hydrocarbon law was, in fact, the first major measure that followed the capture of Maduro. Less than a month after elite US troops took him to a New York prison, the National Assembly was already approving a regulatory reform and resurrecting the sector.
In any case, it is a new entry of investments, key to the improvement of . Because despite Donald Trump’s announcements to purchase millions of barrels of oil, the country’s economic situation remains serious.
The energy multinational Chevron, which turns 103 years old in Venezuela this month, has been one of the few American companies that has navigated the entire path of Venezuela’s prolonged political and economic crisis in recent years. The income that the State has obtained from its drilling saved the cash flow several times during the mandate of Nicolás Maduro, a management marked by the managerial and operational collapse of the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) that took local production to its historic lows.
Even when the US administrations tightened their policy of sanctions against the Chavista regime, Chevron has maintained its operations in the oil fields considered priority. And now that Washington has authorized the issuance of licenses and relaxed pressure on Caracas, Chevron is expanding its investments as much as possible.
