Alejandra Martínez Canchica is a Venezuelan historian and policy analyst
Venezuelans remember Donald Trump’s famous summons of the major oil companies (Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, among others) to the White House on January 9, 2026. On that occasion, Trump proposed an investment of around $100 billion to rebuild the Venezuelan oil industry. It seemed like a sure deal, but scepticism appeared immediately. Exxon CEO Darren Woods noted the company had already suffered two expropriations in Venezuela (one in 1976 and another in 2007) and called the country, under current conditions, “uninvestable.” According to Reuters, ConocoPhillips was also cautious, and only Chevron, holding a license since 2022, appeared optimistic about the “business opportunity.”
One of the companies’ concerns was Venezuela’s existing legal framework, which needed substantial reform to provide certainty and protection for investments—on top of outstanding debts and the need to reform the electrical system, since without electricity the oil industry can’t operate optimally.
While the National Assembly in Caracas, led by interim ruler Delcy Rodríguez’s brother, Jorge, responded with an express reform of the Organic Hydrocarbons Law to attract foreign investment and expand private participation—after decades of nationalizations, expropriations, and discretionary rule changes—Venezuela’s problem isn’t simply publishing a new law in the Official Gazette; it’s the complete lack of credibility needed to convince investors that this institutional arrangement will hold for at least the next 30 years (oil investments are typically long-term and require a stable political environment that significantly lowers risk) once the money has been disbursed.
After the supermajors’ resistance in January, the search for investors widened. Hence Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement on May 21, 2026, during his tour of India, that Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodríguez would travel there to establish energy agreements. The main reason behind this alignment of interests is for the United States to offer India energy products in exchange for reducing Iran’s presence in Asia, thereby containing Iran’s weight in global energy markets. Notably, India is the second-largest buyer of Venezuelan oil after the United States, and is one of the few countries—along with the U.S.—capable of refining Venezuela’s extra-heavy crude.
However, doubts arose once again among Indian investors over dividend payments totaling roughly $600 million - $1 billion. Skepticism wasn’t limited to investors either: in a bilateral meeting between Delcy Rodríguez and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the outstanding dividend payment issue was reportedly also raised.
The third bet now in play is attracting smaller, independent American companies potentially willing to tolerate risk levels the major multinationals rejected, in exchange for access to highly attractive terms that would normally be out of reach—higher returns, for instance. In short: if Venezuela can’t sufficiently reduce risk, it has to compensate for that liability financially, paying capital owners a “risk premium.”
Thus, Hunt Oil and Crossover signed contracts to operate mature fields, and companies like SLB aim to modernize critical parts of PDVSA’s technological infrastructure, which has not been updated in decades.
Even so, to guarantee a favorable environment for corporations, the Trump Administration has taken control of oil revenues, which are now deposited first into a U.S. Treasury Department account and pass through thorough vetting before being transferred to Caracas.
But this involvement falls far short of the $100 billion needed. Hence Plan D—an attempt to circle back to Plan A.
The U.S. administration ends up turning to an operator known for a corruption scandal from the Chávez era—the famous “Derwick Case”—who has also been investigated for alleged money laundering in Spain and Switzerland: Alejandro Betancourt, a figure with access to everyone in Venezuela—the Rodríguez family, ties to PDVSA, contacts with international trading firms, and even the Venezuelan opposition—through his company NABEP. According to Marco Rubio, the reason for choosing Betancourt is that his is the “largest company after Chevron”; he also noted they “found no open investigation against him within the U.S. system” and that in a transition “you have to work with what’s available.”
But why is an intermediary necessary at all? Because in Venezuela, institutions aren’t credible, so their function ends up being replaced by people and power networks. In other words, in Venezuela, whether an operation is blocked or facilitated doesn’t depend on laws and regulations, but on people. That’s why, in these risky and corrupt environments, having access and connections that reduce information asymmetries and transaction costs carries real weight—even economic value. Put more simply: it’s the same reason any Venezuelan needing to complete a government procedure has to turn to a “gestor”—an intermediary who knows the internal workings well enough to move bureaucratic processes along. Betancourt, in effect, is the gestor of this tens-of-billions-of-dollars operation.
But the truth is that even a figure of this caliber doesn’t reduce investor risk—which is why the whole oil saga took yet another astonishing turn: as the WSJ reported on August 29, after nearly eight months of “big oil” resisting investment at the speed and scale President Trump expected, the Administration came up with a sui generis solution: turning the U.S. government itself into a participant in the investment structure.
This structure would make the U.S. government an investor in a private company, rather than a direct counterpart to the Venezuelan state. Under this arrangement, the United States would obtain a 35% stake in the parent company NABEP. The legal mechanism would be the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), which would hold the stake through “penny warrants”—an instrument that lets the U.S. government hold equity without disbursing capital as such. This legal tool could become the guarantee investors need, because if anyone in Venezuela ever decides to expropriate again, the conflict would no longer be solely between the Venezuelan state and the private oil company—it would become a conflict with the U.S. government itself. We view this as a way of “compensating” for the legal insecurity and risk Venezuela currently represents.
The irony of the Venezuelan oil industry’s story tells itself: an industry that was decapitalised and steadily deteriorated after decades of politicisation now needs a foreign power’s political decision to try to credibly attract capital again.
Taken in isolation, the last eight months look like a string of improvisation, recalculations, and changes of plan relative to the original strategy. But viewed from a broader perspective, it becomes clear this is actually a fairly coherent sequence around the same problem: trust. Every plan floated over these months starts from the same constraint: Venezuela has no way to sufficiently reduce risk for private capital to enter spontaneously at the scale needed, and Washington is trying to close that gap to compensate for the regime’s total lack of credibility. In short, they simply aren’t trustworthy.
Unfortunately, credibility can’t be decreed. Venezuela can reform its legislation on an express basis, can grant exploitation rights for decades, can lower royalties and reduce tax schemes, and can even (however unwelcome the idea) undergo a transition to democracy and elections—and it will still be fighting to be credible and attract investment (albeit with better prospects than under Chavismo). In turn, Washington can lift sanctions and bring in the Pentagon as a partner to significantly raise the cost of any future expropriation—but credibility can’t be imposed by mandate either. Predictability is built over the long run, and the real test will be whether contracts remain enforceable regardless of oil price swings, changes in government, contractual disputes, or external shocks—even once they stop being convenient for one of the parties.
Building trust through predictable, enduring institutions usually takes decades and generations, and the worst part is that all of it can be destroyed in a single day. That’s why turning an aquarium into fish soup is easy—but getting new fish and rebuilding the aquarium is another matter entirely.
