Who will cash in on Venezuelan oil?

“Obviously at the front of the pack.” That is how Scott Bessent, America’s treasury secretary, describes Chevron’s position among the growing band of investors hoping to profit from Venezuela’s oil. A desire to reopen the industry to his country’s oilmen played no small part in President Donald Trump’s fateful decision to engineer the downfall of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s strongman. Mr Trump’s plans to “run” Venezuela hinge on American oil companies extracting the country’s fossil fuels. Some adventurous types are ready and eager to cash in. But Chevron may be the only oil major with a significant presence on the ground for some time to come.

Chevron is in pole position because, unlike rivals ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, it hung on in Venezuela despite expropriation by a socialist regime and sanctions imposed by successive American administrations. Mike Wirth, Chevron’s boss, is said to have been in close touch with Mr Bessent for months, ostensibly to navigate special exemptions to those sanctions but perhaps also to nudge policy in the direction of American intervention.

The gambit has paid off. His firm loaded around 1.7m barrels of Venezuelan crude onto tankers in the first week of January, after the partial lifting of an American blockade, the most it has managed since May 2025. It will also benefit from involvement in the sale of 50m stockpiled barrels, worth perhaps $2bn, that America is acquiring from Venezuela.

As the Trump administration begins easing some oil sanctions, other firms around the world are also showing interest. Indian refiners, which buy the sort of heavy crude that Venezuela produces, are looking for bargains. Vitol and Trafigura, two Swiss commodity traders, have acquired licences to sell Venezuelan crude and will join Chevron in marketing existing stocks. Yet it is American oilmen and financiers who could have the most to gain. Some appear keener than others.

Although Venezuela is home to a wealth of oil reserves, much of these are “extra heavy”, and too viscous to flow like conventional crude. Extraction is hard and costly. On top of this are the huge legal and political risks of operating in the country, which will not be resolved simply by Mr Maduro’s removal.

This will not stop some American firms from making at least modest investments. Oil-services companies including Halliburton, slb and Baker Hughes, which do such things as drill new wells and maintain existing ones, have experience operating in the world’s most hostile oil patches and are eager. Some smaller oil drillers will also go in. Venezuela’s bitumen belt, in the Orinoco region, has lots of abandoned wells that can be reopened with modest investment. “You don’t need the balance-sheet of Exxon for these,” says one expert.

Magnates with maga connections are among the keenest. Uber-rich oilmen in Mr Trump’s orbit include Harry Sargeant, an oil-and-asphalt tycoon who has long cultivated ties both in Caracas and at Mar-a-Lago. He is said to be advising the Trump administration on which firms should enter Venezuela. Harold Hamm, an Oklahoman shale pioneer who has been expanding into Argentina, says he would “definitely consider future investment”.

Some financiers hope to cash in, too. Elliott, a hedge fund run by Paul Singer, a big donor to Mr Trump, is among the investors that in November won a court-ordered auction for Citgo, an America-based refining subsidiary of pdvsa, Venezuela’s national oil firm. Because Citgo is designed around Venezuela’s heavy crude, sanctions depressed the price. As they are relaxed, its value should soar.

Other financiers may hope to benefit indirectly from a recovery in Venezuelan oil. Tens of billions of dollars in defaulted sovereign and pdvsa bonds, together with large unpaid arbitration awards from past expropriations, now trade, in effect, as an option on future oil output. If production bounces back, a future Venezuelan government is more likely to settle old debts.

Yet only oil majors can stump up the cash needed to get Venezuela’s industry truly humming again. Chevron will stay and grow, given its foot in the door; the firm reckons that within two years it can boost by half its local output of 240,000 barrels a day, produced jointly with pdvsa. But Chevron’s fellow oil giants are likely to be far more mindful of the risks.

One problem is that deals struck in haste could eventually come under review. Helima Croft of rbc Capital Markets, an investment firm, says that it is an “open question” whether America remains committed to overseeing Venezuela’s oil sector beyond 2028. A future Democratic administration could scrutinise deals signed now.

Political cover matters all the more because of the bitter memories of the past. Exxon and ConocoPhillips are still sour about the expropriations under Hugo Chávez, Mr Maduro’s predecessor, which led to enormous losses and protracted lawsuits. Mr Trump has cast doubt on the idea of compensation for past asset seizures. “Nice write-off,” he remarked dismissively when asked about the claims of Exxon and Conoco, adding that it was “their fault”.

Unless there is a settlement, new capital is unlikely to flow in any quantity, warns one expert. And a settlement will be remote for as long as Venezuela is mired in debt. Little surprise that Darren Woods, chief executive of Exxon, has said bluntly that Venezuela is “uninvestable” under current conditions. ■