(Jan 05): US oil companies rose in premarket trading on Monday (Jan 5) after US President Donald Trump said the US plans to “run” Venezuela after capturing Nicolás Maduro over the weekend.
Chevron Corp, the only American oil major currently operating in the South American nation under special US permission, gained as much as 10%. ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp also rose.
Chevron — which remained in Venezuela after the nationalisation of foreign oil assets at the turn of the century — is best positioned among global oil giants to immediately benefit from bigger US control of the world’s largest crude reserves. ConocoPhillips is owed more than US$8 billion (RM32.61 billion) by Venezuela and Exxon is still owed about US$1 billion stemming from the nationalisation of their Venezuelan assets in the early 2000s, international arbitrators have ruled.
It’s unclear how willing global oil companies are to pour substantial sums of money into a country run by a temporary US-backed government without established legal and fiscal rules.
ConocoPhillips said this weekend it is premature to speculate about future business activities. In 2024, the US company that once dominated production in Venezuela was granted a string of licences by the US government that better positioned it to recover some or all of the losses from asset seizures in the country.
Exxon would look at any potential opportunity in Venezuela but would be cautious because its assets there have been expropriated in the past, CEO Darren Woods said in a November interview.
See also: Saudi oil sales to Asia to remain robust after third price drop
For Chevron, which holds a US licence to drill and export oil from the sanctioned country, operations continue in Venezuela as the company has been shipping oil even as the Trump administration launched a partial maritime blockade.
Analysts and traders say it could take years for critical infrastructure to be fully repaired and for oil to freely flow out of Venezuela, which currently contributes less than 1% of global supplies even though it has the world’s largest reserves.
Uploaded by Arion Yeow
