Eni Enters Uruguay Deepwater as Chevron Unveils $7 Billion Venezuela Push
Italy's Eni takes a 50% operating stake in Uruguay's frontier Atlantic block while Chevron announces a $7 billion-plus Venezuelan expansion in the same week.
Chevron Corp announced on Friday (2026-09-04) that new joint-venture agreements in Venezuela would allow it to more than double Venezuelan production to approximately 600,000 barrels per day, backed by more than $7 billion in investment over five years following talks facilitated by the Trump administration. The moves have drawn sharp domestic criticism: Foreign Policy reported that Venezuelans have decried the deal terms as opaque and oligarchic.5,6
Eni moved on two fronts simultaneously. Also on Friday (2026-09-04), the Italian company finalized a 25-year agreement with state-owned PdVSA to relaunch the Junín-5 heavy oilfield in Venezuela's Orinoco Belt. The field holds 35 billion barrels of certified oil in place but currently produces around 12,000 barrels per day. Eni's existing Perla gas field in Venezuela already supplies roughly 35 percent of the country's gas demand and accounted for the bulk of Eni's 64,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the country last year, according to the company.6
Four days before the Venezuela announcements, on Monday (2026-08-31), Eni completed a different South American bet. Italy's major signed an agreement with a subsidiary of Argentina's YPF SA and Uruguay's state energy company ANCAP to enter the OFF-5 exploration license off Uruguay's Atlantic coast, acquiring a 50% operating stake in the block.3
The case for Uruguay rests on analogy with Namibia. Oilprice.com reported in July (2026-07-12) that companies are positioning for exploration drilling in Uruguay's deepwater blocks in the expectation that the South Atlantic conjugate margin holds resources comparable to the transformative discoveries made offshore Namibia in Africa. The underlying geology is largely untested: Uruguay has only three deepwater wells in its entire drilling history.2
That limited well count is both the draw and the risk. Oilprice.com cited "hopes of millions and millions of barrels of crude" as the driver behind Eni's acquisition of operatorship from YPF. The OFF-5 deal still requires approval from Uruguayan authorities before it formally closes.2,3
Uruguay is the latest addition to what has become a wide South American slate for Eni. In late June (2026-06-29), the Italian company and XRG entered three Vaca Muerta blocks in Argentina with YPF, establishing upstream gas supply for an Argentina LNG project centered on two floating liquefaction facilities with a combined capacity of 12 million metric tons per annum, under a joint development agreement announced on February 12, 2026.1,3
Other majors are making comparable bets on South American deepwater. On Thursday (2026-09-03), Shell announced a deal with BP to take a 50% stake in the Tupinambá exploration block in Brazil's Santos Basin, with two major wells to be drilled over the next year. Shell also picked up a 30% interest in five Gulf of Mexico leases through the same arrangement.4
ICE Brent crude front-month stood at $94.97 a barrel with markets closed on Saturday (2026-09-05). Deepwater exploration spending is broadly supportable at that crude price, but Uruguay's OFF-5 occupies an earlier-stage risk category than the established plays attracting capital elsewhere in South America. No commercial discovery has been made in the basin, regulatory sign-off on the Eni-YPF deal remains outstanding, and Chevron's commitment of more than $7 billion to the better-understood Venezuelan heavy oil belt shows where production certainty lies on a five-year view. Regulatory clearance for OFF-5 is the near-term gate; after that, the drill bit decides whether the Namibia comparison holds on Uruguay's side of the Atlantic.2,3,6