CARCAS — Seven months after Nicolás Maduro’s removal, Venezuela’s oil sector reached a genuine operational milestone this week: American companies signed their first new production-related contracts with PDVSA, even as exports to U.S. refineries have quadrupled since the end of last year — and even as the industry’s largest players continue to stay away.
Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company signed a hydrocarbons production participation contract covering two onshore fields in eastern Venezuela, Caro and Carisito, confirmed Tuesday at a Houston industry showcase by Venezuelan Oil Minister Paula Henao.
Under a participation contract, Hunt bears the costs of developing and enhancing the fields directly and receives a share of whatever they produce, rather than a fixed service fee — a genuine equity-style bet on Venezuelan crude. Hunt CEO Hunter Hunt said the company is “proud to be one of the first American companies to sign an agreement with PDVSA to help expand Venezuela’s oil and gas production.”
Oilfield services giant SLB signed a separate framework agreement to conduct integrated reservoir studies across the country, building on a memorandum of understanding the two parties signed in Caracas in June.
A reservoir study maps a field’s subsurface geology, measures how much oil remains in place, models recovery rates, and identifies optimal well placement — the foundational engineering data companies need before they can commit serious drilling capital.
SLB CEO Olivier Le Peuch described Venezuela’s sector as having “substantial resource potential” requiring “technology, digital integration and long-term talent development.” SLB already maintains roughly 80 Venezuelan employees in-country and has access to nearly 2,000 Venezuelan alumni worldwide who could return.
Speaking from Houston, Henao made the government’s pitch to industry directly: “The invitation is that we can sit down, we can evaluate, what is the opportunity in Venezuela? It’s an entire world waiting to be discovered, just waiting for us to reach these agreements so we can develop these new areas.”
Exports
The commercial announcements are backed by real, measurable movement in output and trade. Venezuela’s crude production has climbed from roughly 1 million barrels per day at the end of 2025 to approximately 1.25 million barrels per day today, according to PDVSA Vice President Jovanny Martinez, who said output will reach 1.245 million barrels daily by the end of August, with exports up 19.7% year-to-date.
Most of that growth so far has come from Chevron optimizing existing wells rather than new drilling.
The U.S.-bound share of that crude has moved even more dramatically. Under Secretary of Energy Kyle Haustveit confirmed that more than 500,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan crude now flow to U.S. refineries — a quadrupling of the roughly 135,000 barrels per day that made the same journey at the end of 2025.
Why the Oil Has to Go Specifically to U.S. Refineries
The trade pattern isn’t a political choice so much as a chemistry problem. Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt crude carries an API gravity of just 8 to 10 degrees — a consistency closer to tar than to the light crude produced in most of the world’s major oil regions.
At that viscosity, it cannot move through a pipeline unaided; it must first be diluted with a lighter hydrocarbon called naphtha to flow at all.
The United States currently ships more than 100,000 barrels per day of naphtha south specifically for this purpose. Once that blended crude reaches the U.S., it requires specialized refining equipment — coking units and visbreakers — that most refineries worldwide simply don’t have.
Valero Energy leads U.S. purchases of Venezuelan crude, followed by Chevron and PBF Energy. Under Secretary Haustveit has described the resulting naphtha-for-crude exchange as “a beautiful energy partnership.”
The Real Bottleneck: Not Enough Rigs
As of the end of July, Venezuela had only two active onshore drilling rigs, according to Baker Hughes data reported by Reuters — nowhere near enough to sustain, let alone grow, output across a country holding the world’s largest proven crude reserves. SLB is now working to reactivate as many as 15 idle rigs; William Antonio, SLB’s president for Mexico, Central America, and Venezuela operations, told Reuters all 15 could be working within a year, with up to four returning to service before the end of 2026.
Reactivating a single idle rig isn’t simple or cheap — repairs can exceed $1 million per unit, and operators typically need contracts of around 12 months to justify that cost. Westwood Energy projects rig demand could reach 12 units this year, supporting a 48% jump in production from January to December, reaching roughly 1.2 million barrels per day by year's end — still short of the government’s own stated target.
Longer term, Rystad Energy's Simon Sjøthun has projected Venezuela could reach 3 million barrels per day by 2040, while Crossover Energy CEO Eric McCrady told Fortune he believes 3.5 million barrels daily is achievable within five to ten years.
Why the Biggest Players Are Still Waiting
The companies signing contracts in Houston this week share a specific profile: private independents and service firms with high risk tolerance and balance sheets small enough to move before Venezuela’s legal framework is fully resolved.
ExxonMobil, expropriated by Venezuela in 2007, has called the country “uninvestable.” ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance has argued the entire Venezuelan energy system, including PDVSA itself, needs restructuring before international majors can credibly commit capital.
The core obstacle is roughly $170 billion in outstanding creditor claims, expropriation arbitration awards, and sovereign bond defaults accumulated against Venezuela over nearly two decades.
Consulting firm FTI has found that new capital invested under contracts signed today would be structurally subordinated to those pre-existing claims. Crossover Energy’s McCrady, who expects to sign his own contracts in the coming days, described the calculus candidly: “In the oil industry you’re always managing risks. I think the risks here are more above-ground — the labor force, equipment availability, the political situation — versus below-ground geologic risk... We’re comfortable taking risks.”
Who Controls the Money, and a Live Legal Dispute
Oil revenues from Venezuelan crude sales currently flow into a U.S. Treasury account held in PDVSA’s name, after initially passing through a U.S.-controlled account in Qatar.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said Washington needs to maintain leverage over Venezuelan oil sales to drive the political changes it wants to see. That arrangement remains legally contested: in February congressional testimony, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was unable to cite the specific statutory authority the department is relying on. Senator Elizabeth Warren has argued there is “no basis in law” for the president to control the sale of assets seized through a U.S. military operation.
As of April, the State Department had authorized approximately $3 billion in disbursements to Venezuela.
The Legals
The commercial activity rests on Venezuela’s most significant hydrocarbons law reform since the sector was nationalized in 1976. On January 29, Venezuela’s National Assembly approved, and acting President Delcy Rodríguez immediately signed, an overhaul letting private companies enter upstream production directly — reversing rules that had reserved those activities for state entities. The reform ends PDVSA’s upstream monopoly, lowers the state’s minimum ownership stake in joint ventures from 60% to 50.1%, and caps royalties at 30%.
What the law does not do is erase the historical expropriation record or settle the outstanding legacy claims still working through international arbitration and U.S. courts.
Venezuela holds 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the largest in the world — but its current production of 1.25 million barrels per day represents only about 36% of its historical peak of 3.5 million barrels per day in the 1970s.
This week’s contracts mark the beginning of the engineering effort to close that gap, not its completion. Whether that gap actually closes will likely depend less on geology, which nearly everyone involved agrees is favorable, than on whether Washington and Caracas can build the legal architecture — particularly around Venezuela’s $170 billion in legacy claims — fast enough to bring the industry’s largest players off the sidelines.
