POLITICO
By Ben Lefebvre, Sophia Cai and James Bikales
12/17/2025
The Trump administration is asking U.S. oil companies if they’re interested in returning to Venezuela once leader Nicolás Maduro is gone, four people familiar with the discussions told POLITICO.
And so far, the answer is a hard “no.”
The administration’s outreach to the industry, previously unreported, is the latest sign the White House is dreaming of a post-Maduro future for Venezuela — and how the world’s oil markets are both helping and hindering that goal.
The markets, glutted with supply and with prices at nearly five-year lows, are giving President Donald Trump an unusually free hand to tighten military pressure on the South American OPEC member, much the way they largely shrugged off U.S. and Israeli missile strikes on Iran in June. But those prices are also way too low to entice companies to take the risk of pouring huge investments into the crumbling Venezuelan oil facilities that former strongman Hugo Chávez seized decades ago, industry officials and analysts said.
The U.S. benchmark oil price was around $56 a barrel Wednesday afternoon, the lowest since January 2021. That means Trump has only limited reason to worry that an attack on Venezuela would send gasoline prices spiraling upward — but it also means U.S. oil companies have better investment options elsewhere.
“There has been the genesis of an outreach with the industry on the potential of reentering Venezuela,” one person familiar with the discussion said. “But frankly, there’s not a lot of interest from the industry, in light of lower oil prices and more attractive fields globally.”
The administration has only recently started initiating the outreach to the industry, two of the people familiar with the efforts said.
“It’s not as straightforward to convince companies to risk capital in an uncertain political environment,” one of those people said. Three of the people who spoke to POLITICO were granted anonymity to describe internal discussions.
The U.S. effort, led by the State Department, has also gotten assistance from Evanan Romero, a former executive at the Venezuelan state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela who now works as a consultant in Houston, a person in the industry said.
Romero told POLITICO that the Trump administration’s outreach included brokering a meeting in Washington in late November, led by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, among Exxon, ConocoPhillips and representatives of a Venezuelan opposition group to which Romero belongs. The discussion centered on the possibility of the two oil majors returning to the country.
Romero, who did not attend the meeting but was given a readout from opposition group members, described the meeting as “positive” and said Wright’s presence was “very, very helpful.” He said Exxon and ConocoPhillips aired concerns about the debt they are owed from their past Venezuela operations, and the Venezuelan representatives floated the opportunity to take control of additional fields to compensate for the debt.
The State and Energy departments did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Exxon and ConocoPhillips did not immediately confirm their participation in such a meeting as Romero described.
Romero said that Wright encouraged the companies “to get to an understanding and solve their outstanding problems along the way,” but made clear the Trump administration would like to see more Venezuelan crude flowing to U.S. refineries.
“‘We need those barrels,’ — that’s an important message from the government,” said Romero.
Romero said he has been involved in ongoing discussions about the technical details of a possible return of the American firms. He added that the Venezuelan group is also in talks with Spanish and Italian oil producers.
Trump on Tuesday announced on social media a blockade of ships leaving Venezuela carrying oil that’s been hit by U.S. sanctions, adding that the United States “will not allow a Hostile Regime to take our Oil, Land, or any other Assets, all of which must be returned to the United States, IMMEDIATELY.”
A White House spokesperson did not respond to questions.
Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Weatherford International and Baker Hughes were all operating in Venezuela in the early 2000s when Chávez tried to force them to give majority stakes of their projects to Petróleos de Venezuela. Venezuela seized the assets of companies that resisted.
Richard Goldberg, a former White House official who helped conceive of and stand up Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council, said it “would make sense” for the administration to reach out to companies “given the current environment.”
“With the naval blockade, the president is halting the lifeblood of the regime,” said Goldberg, who said he had no direct knowledge of the outreach. “And if Venezuela oil exports are sanction-free and returning to pre-Chavez days, I think you can see incredible opportunities for the oil companies to return. Many of them like Chevron already have infrastructure there, so it would just be a matter of getting back up and running.”
Spokespeople for Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton and Weatherford did not respond to inquiries. Spokespeople for Baker Hughes and Schlumberger, now known as SLB, declined to comment.
Chevron spokesperson Bill Turenne directed all questions about the security situation in Venezuela to the appropriate authorities in the U.S. government. Chevron has been the sole major oil company to continue working in Venezuela, operating under a special license to produce oil in the country and export it to the United States.
“Chevron has operated in Venezuela for over a century, and we believe our presence continues to be a stabilizing force for the local economy, the region and U.S. energy security,” Turenne said in a statement. “Chevron’s operations in Venezuela continue in full compliance with laws and regulations applicable to its business, as well as the sanctions frameworks provided for by the U.S. government. Our top priority is the safety of our personnel, the communities in which we operate, the environment and the integrity of our joint venture assets.”
The first Trump administration placed sanctions on Venezuela, including its oil industry. Years of sanctions, insufficient investment and political turmoil have since turned what had been a top oil-producing country with vast deposits into one that industry representatives have called a junkyard.
Still, reviving Venezuela’s oil production may not be as easy as some in the administration think, analysts said.
Fernando Ferreira, director of the Geopolitical Risk Service at Rapidan Energy Group, said oil majors are likely to be “cautious before jumping in with both feet as the administration maybe hopes that they would.”
“The companies that have been burned once are going to be careful about going back in — they have to justify to shareholders why it is different now,” Ferreira said. “There’s probably going to be a gap between a transition and a rush for investments going to Venezuela.”
But he noted the rush of interest from companies in returning to Venezuela after the Biden administration began softening sanctions in 2022. “There’s definitely a latent interest in Venezuela,” he said.
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