Earlier this year, Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, attended a meeting at the White House where he told attendees that Venezuela was “uninvestable.” The company has now signed a memorandum of understanding with the country.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
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Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company, is considering a return to Venezuela after leaving it nearly two decades ago.
On Monday, the company announced that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Venezuelan government and its state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA. The memorandum of understanding, which is generally a non-binding agreement, involves ExxonMobil examining potential “upstream opportunities” – which refers to oil exploration and production.
ExxonMobil said in a statement: “We welcome the opportunity to evaluate potential opportunities upstream with the Venezuelan government and PDVSA. »
A lot has happened in the Venezuelan oil sector over the past ten months. In January, shortly after the Trump administration captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump gathered U.S. oil company executives at the White House and urged them to invest in the country. At the time, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods said the country was “uninvestable.”
But the country revised its oil law this year to make it more attractive to international oil companies. These changes included granting greater operational control to private oil companies in partnerships, as well as reforming taxes and royalties. The country has also welcomed the expansion of other US oil companies, including Chevron and Continental Resources.
ExxonMobil executives nevertheless maintained a cautious tone. On a call with analysts last month, Woods said that while “progress has been made in those areas – working on the tax regimes, working on the legal regimes, working on investor protections, a number of things are sort of underway.” But there is a way to go.
“This memorandum is a significant first step,” ExxonMobil’s statement said. “But any future investment would require stable policies, clear regulations, strong investment protections and competitive returns.”
ExxonMobil, spun off from Standard Oil, operated in Venezuela for much of the 20th century. But over the years, the company’s relationship with the Venezuelan government became difficult. Beginning in 2004, President Hugo Chávez forcibly renegotiated contracts with international oil companies and ordered the nationalization of ExxonMobil’s assets. In 2007, ExxonMobil left the country.
Since then, ExxonMobil has been in international arbitration with the Venezuelan government. In September 2025, a US court ordered Venezuela to pay ExxonMobil more than $985 million for past expropriations.
Energy analysts told NPR that ExxonMobil could study oil fields in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt, a region with significant oil reserves and where the company has operated in the past.
The process of extracting oil in this region generates a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, says Paasha Mahdavi, a political science professor at UC Santa Barbara who studies the oil industry.
Mahdavi says oil production in the Orinoco belt has particularly high levels of methane, a powerful gas for heating the planet. “It’s really important from a global climate perspective,” Mahdavi says.
ExxonMobil also has significant oil investments in Venezuela’s neighbor Guyana, a key emerging player in the international oil industry. For years, Venezuela and Guyana have had a territorial dispute also linked to oil rights.
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