Venezuela’s Oil Revival Accelerates as U.S. Majors Push Trump’s New Energy Order
China's Renewables Boom Faces Record Clean Power Curtailments Simon Watkins is a former senior FX trader and salesman, financial journalist, and best-selling author.
He was Head of Forex Institutional Sales and Trading for… Following the Washington-led removal of Venezuela’s previous president, Nicolás Maduro, from office on 3 January this year, U.S.
firms are pushing hard to keep increasing oil production from the hydrocarbons giant, in line with President Donald Trump’s grand plans for the country within his new world order.
The foundation for such output increases is extremely solid, as Venezuela still holds the world’s largest proven crude reserves -- roughly 303 billion barrels, or about 17% of the global total.
Most of this is extra-heavy crude oil from the Orinoco Belt that requires more technical expertise to handle than lighter grades but is cheaper to lift and often more profitable to process, with the challenge lying in transporting, upgrading, and refining it, not extracting it.
Moreover, of its 14 supergiant oil fields, 11 retain more than half of their original reserves.
Once up and running to something approaching full capacity, the country is to play a key role in the ‘Americas’ geographical sphere -- one of three such regions, as delineated recently in the U.S.’s‘2025 National Security Strategy’-- so where are we now in this development arc following comments in the past week or so from U.S.
oil and gas giant, Chevron? According to chief financial officer Eimear Bonner, during a recent earnings call, the U.S.
supermajor has increased its oil production in Venezuela from 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 250,000 bpd over the past few years.
And, based solely on its three current joint ventures in the country, output has risen over just the past six months by 12% year on year to 280,000 bpd.
This followed the mid-April announcement of an asset-swap agreement with Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.
(PDVSA), under which Chevron received an additional 13.21% interest in the Petroindependencia joint venture, increasing its total stake to 49%.
| Product | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Brent Crude | $102.14/bbl | +0.34% |
| WTI Crude | $96.90/bbl | +0.21% |
| EN590 Diesel | $846/MT | +0.18% |
| Jet Fuel A-1 | $1090/MT | +0.55% |
| Mazut M100 | $450/MT | -0.15% |
| Bitumen 60/70 | $470/MT | +0.08% |
| Sulphur Gran 99.5% | $470/MT | -0.44% |
| Urea 46% Gran | $650/MT | +1.12% |
| NPK 16-16-16 | $460/MT | -0.28% |
| Nat Gas TTF | $15.42/MMBtu | +0.92% |
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