Chevron will deploy more than $7 billion across its Venezuelan joint ventures through 2031, targeting a production increase to roughly 600,000 barrels per day from the current 290,000 bpd. The outlay follows revised agreements that grant the company better fiscal and commercial terms plus fresh acreage in the Orinoco Belt, with total lifting costs expected to stay under $20 a barrel.
Terms and acreage
The updated deals assign Chevron the Carabobo-1 and Carabobo-2-South-A blocks within the Petroindependencia venture, where its interest rose to 49 percent in April. Rights to the adjacent Ayacucho 8 area, next to the Petropiar operation, were also secured. All three Venezuelan partnerships have already lifted output 15 percent year to date.
Context of a shrinking basin
Venezuela’s national output sits between 1.1 million and 1.2 million bpd, a fraction of the 3 million-plus recorded in the late 1990s. Every barrel Chevron produces there is shipped to the United States, making the expansion a direct feedstock play for US Gulf Coast refineries.
Separate from the Washington plan
Chevron’s commitment runs in parallel to a US government arrangement taking majority stakes in 17 fields holding about 65 billion barrels of proved reserves. President Trump has separately floated a $100 billion rebuilding target after the January capture and removal of Nicolás Maduro. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, whose assets were seized in 2007, have not signaled a return.