22nd September 2026
There is a potentially positive development taking shape in the world oil market which could become increasingly important over the next five years.
Venezuela has some of the world's largest oil reserves, but years of underinvestment and a badly run-down industry have left the country producing only a fraction of what it once did.
Now international oil companies are starting to put billions of dollars into rebuilding that production.
The biggest commitment so far has come from Chevron, which has agreed to invest more than $7 billion over the next five years in its Venezuelan operations.
Chevron currently produces about 280,000 barrels of oil a day from its Venezuelan joint ventures. Its plan is to increase that to approximately 600,000 barrels a day by 2031. The company expects production to build progressively as more drilling rigs are brought into operation and existing infrastructure is restored and expanded.
That would mean roughly 320,000 additional barrels a day from Chevron alone.
It is not an overnight increase. But oil is a global market, and several years of additional production can become significant.
Chevron is not alone
The Venezuelan revival is broader than one company's investment.
Italian energy company Eni has also signed agreements to expand its activities, while Repsol is planning to increase production from existing Venezuelan assets. ExxonMobil is now in discussions about potentially returning to projects in the Orinoco Belt, having left Venezuela almost two decades ago. Continental Resources has also signed a preliminary agreement to develop an oil field there.
This matters because Venezuela does not need to discover another giant oilfield.
It already has enormous resources.
The problem has been turning those resources into commercially usable oil.
Bringing an old industry back to life
Venezuela's oil industry suffered from years of underinvestment. Wells, pipelines, processing facilities and other infrastructure need maintenance and replacement.
Much of Venezuela's oil is also very heavy, particularly in the enormous Orinoco Oil Belt. Producing and processing this crude requires specialist equipment and, in many cases, other hydrocarbons to dilute it so that it can be transported and exported.
That makes the return of major international oil companies significant.
They bring capital, technology, drilling expertise and experience in operating large and technically difficult oilfields.
Energy consultancy Rystad estimates that Venezuelan production could increase by around 17%, or about 194,000 barrels a day, between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the fourth quarter of 2028. Most of that increase is expected to come from existing producing fields rather than completely new developments.
That is perhaps the most realistic way to look at the story.
The first gains are likely to come from repairing, expanding and getting more out of fields that already exist.
It could eventually become much bigger
Chevron's target of 600,000 barrels a day is only part of the potential.
The company's chief financial officer has described 2031 as the point at which production is likely to reach about 600,000 barrels a day, with a potential plateau of 600,000–700,000 barrels a day afterwards. Chevron also believes there is considerable additional potential from further development.
Other companies could be adding production at the same time. That raises an interesting possibility for the world oil market.
If Venezuela manages to rebuild production while other countries continue increasing output, the global market could gradually move towards having more oil available than it has today.
That does not guarantee lower oil prices. Demand, OPEC decisions, wars, sanctions and economic growth will continue to influence the market.
But additional supply gives consumers another reason to be optimistic about the longer-term outlook.
It will not solve today's fuel-price problem
There is an important catch for motorists and households in Britain.
Venezuelan oil will not suddenly appear in the world's markets next month.
Chevron's own plan is a five-year investment programme, with its 600,000-barrel-a-day target around 2031. Other projects will have their own timetables.
So anyone hoping that Venezuelan investment will quickly bring down the price of diesel or heating oil is likely to be disappointed.
However, oil markets are forward-looking.
If traders become increasingly confident that hundreds of thousands of additional barrels will come onto the market over the next few years, that can influence expectations about future supply and prices before all the oil is actually produced.
And there is potentially a much bigger story behind Venezuela.
The country is effectively reopening one of the world's great oil provinces to international investment.
If that continues, Venezuela could gradually become a much more important contributor to global oil supply than it is today.
A little more breathing space for the oil market
For consumers, the encouraging part of this story is not that Venezuelan oil will suddenly make petrol cheap.
It is that the world has more potential sources of additional oil supply than today's headlines sometimes suggest.
Venezuela has enormous reserves. Brazil and Guyana are expanding production. US producers continue to respond to high prices. Other oil-producing countries are also investing.
None of this guarantees cheap oil.
But if these investments succeed, they could give the global market more supply and more flexibility during future periods of high demand or disruption.
For Britain, that matters because oil prices eventually feed through into petrol, diesel, heating oil, transport and the cost of moving goods.
For rural areas such as Caithness, where many households and businesses depend heavily on vehicles and some still rely on heating oil, movements in world energy prices can be particularly noticeable.
The Venezuelan story therefore deserves watching.
The political background is complicated, and there are plenty of risks to the investment programmes. But from a purely oil-market perspective, billions of dollars are now being directed towards bringing more production back into a country that has an extraordinary amount of oil underground.
It will take years rather than months.
But if the investment succeeds, the world could have considerably more oil available by the end of the decade than it does today.