Venezuela Courts Foreign Oil Capital with Orinoco Belt Deals as Rodriguez Backs $200 Billion Drive
Continental Resources signed with PDVSA on September 16 in an investment wave VP Rodriguez says could unlock over $200 billion for Venezuela's oil sector.
Continental Resources signed a memorandum of understanding with Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA on Wednesday (2026-09-16), taking on operatorship of the Ayacucho 2 Block in the Orinoco Belt, which holds an estimated 30 billion barrels of recoverable resources. The signing was one of several that day. Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said the investment wave could generate more than $200 billion, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio placing near-term private commitments at nearly $100 billion.6
ICE Brent crude front-month traded at $99.48 a barrel on Monday (2026-09-21), down 0.81%. That level reflects little expectation of near-term Venezuelan supply growth, and the scepticism is historically grounded. Venezuela holds the world's largest proven crude reserves but produced only 742,000 barrels a day in the most recent data, 0.8% of global crude output. That is down 70% from 2013 levels.6
The Continental agreement remains preliminary. The formal Contrato de Participación Productiva governing Continental's 100% working interest in Ayacucho 2 has yet to be signed; both sides said they intended to advance it in the coming weeks. CEO Doug Lawler called the block "one of the most significant resource opportunities in Continental's nearly 60-year history." Those assessments will be tested against actual drilling results and production timelines.6
Also on Wednesday (2026-09-16), Turkish firm Çan2 Termik's subsidiary Minerosol Group signed a separate 20-year production deal with PDVSA for the CEMA field in Anzoátegui state, committing $381.7 million. The CEMA field holds 104.2 million barrels of remaining oil reserves and 499.3 billion cubic feet of gas across 10 fields. Current output of roughly 400 barrels a day is targeted to reach 9,865 barrels a day under the new contract.6
These Orinoco deals sit alongside Chevron's announcement on Wednesday (2026-09-02) that its Venezuelan joint ventures plan to invest more than $7 billion over five years, targeting roughly 600,000 barrels a day from their operations. A separate U.S. government arrangement gave the Office of Strategic Capital a free carry 35% equity stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, which holds a 100-year licence to access 17 Venezuelan oilfields. Proven reserves are cited at around 65 billion barrels. President Trump called it "the biggest oil deal, by far, in World history," but Energy Voice reported that questions circulated about NABEP's credentials and corporate background.4,3
Venezuela's aggregate production ambitions are very large. If the NABEP licence required extraction of those 65 billion barrels over 100 years, output would need to run above 7 million barrels a day, based on analysis reported by Energy Voice. Venezuela has never produced at that rate. The country's oil infrastructure has deteriorated sharply through years of sanctions and underinvestment, and the gap between signed agreement and produced barrel has historically been wide.3,6
TotalEnergies has not been announced as a Venezuelan operator in the available reporting, but the French supermajor is deploying capital aggressively across the global upstream. The company and its partners plan $10 billion of investment in Angola's oil sector over five years, supporting a production base of roughly 450,000 barrels a day. On Friday (2026-09-18), TotalEnergies and BlackRock's Global Infrastructure Partners signed a partnership under which GIP will invest $1.8 billion in TotalEnergies' oil and gas infrastructure assets in Africa.5,7
The company is simultaneously navigating a legal dispute in the United States. Seven states led by New York filed suit on Tuesday (2026-06-02) challenging the Trump administration's deal with TotalEnergies to cancel its offshore wind leases. Under that arrangement, the Department of the Interior agreed to reimburse the $795 million TotalEnergies paid in lease fees and a further $133 million for the Carolina Long Bay wind lease, contingent on TotalEnergies redirecting capital toward fossil fuel projects.1,2
Whether Venezuela converts these multiple concurrent agreements into production gains depends on factors Rodriguez's projections do not resolve: the reliability of PDVSA as a counterparty, the state of the country's wellfield infrastructure, and the durability of the sanctions waivers underpinning each deal. Continental's formal production-sharing contract, expected in the coming weeks, is the next concrete marker to watch.6