US Energy Secretary announces multimillion-dollar investments in Venezuelan oil

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, speaking from Venezuela, has announced an investment of over $100 million to overhaul a plant run by the multinational oil giant Chevron, one of the few U.S. companies with a strong presence in the country. “They’re on target to double production in that particular field in the next 12 to 18 months and probably quintuple it over the next five years,” said the Trump administration official at Petropiar, an oil processing plant operated by Chevron and the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA.

Wright concluded his last day of work in Venezuela with a visit to oil fields and further meetings with Venezuelan authorities. The visit promises to be the first of several more in the future, as Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez indicated.

The primary objective of Wright’s visit, as he himself has stated, is to promote economic thaw and expand U.S. influence in the local energy sector, without neglecting the political implications. The official, who has repeatedly praised both nations in his official speeches, spoke about Washington’s plans to lift Venezuela out of its current state of impoverishment.

Wright, who has stated that this year could see a “dramatic” increase in oil, gas and electricity levels in the country, visited the oil fields operated by the joint Chevron-PDVSA ventures Petroindependencia and Petropiar in the Orinoco Belt, in the southeast of the country, which has the world’s largest extra-heavy crude oil deposits.

In the late 1990s, Venezuela was producing three million barrels of oil per day and was one of the seven nations with the highest volume of crude oil exports in the world. Local oil production began to decline steadily during the Hugo Chávez years, a period marked by the politicization of objectives and rampant corruption. Today, after 12 years with Nicolás Maduro in power, the country barely produces one million barrels per day. Rebuilding the local oil infrastructure and returning Venezuela to its former production levels, experts say, will require billions of dollars and many years — even more than Wright himself is announcing.

The agreements imposed on Caracas by the Trump administration and the issuance of new production licenses to international companies and contractors, which also benefit PDVSA and national capital, could put local oil production at 1.3 million barrels by the end of this year, according to experts such as the economist Orlando Ochoa.

“With the investments that Chevron, Maurel and Prom, and Repsol plan to make, along with the improvements PDVSA will undergo and the licenses granted to these and other companies, oil production will increase, but not as quickly as some believe. More than 300,000 barrels per day this year is impossible. If these agreements are finalized and everything goes well, production will reach approximately 500,000 barrels per day in two years, which would be an ideal scenario,” says Ochoa.

“The U.S. Secretary of Energy’s agenda with Venezuela has a very clear geopolitical orientation. Political issues come first, followed by technical and oil-related discussions,” says Rafael Quirós, a petroleum economist and professor at the Central University of Venezuela. Quirós believes Wright intends to increase U.S. personnel in the oil fields and sideline China, Russia, and Iran — geopolitical allies of the Bolivarian Revolution — from areas of influence in Venezuelan politics and the economy.

Venezuelan state television has been broadcasting continuous reports highlighting a “win-win” agreement between the two nations. The reports emphasize the historical development of relations between the two countries and promise enormous economic benefits.

“Tax revenues will increase, production will rise,” says Quirós. “It will be hard work, it won’t be easy at all. These investments will be a huge help,” he says, “but it’s important to understand that all the country’s development plans, and its growth expectations, cannot be fully implemented if this isn’t accompanied by political change and Venezuela’s return to the international financial community.”

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