BP has answered Donald Trump’s call for oil companies to help rebuild Venezuela’s fossil fuel industry with new plans to develop a large offshore gasfield.
BP will partner with two oil firms with close links to the Trump administration to develop the second phase of the Loran gasfield, in one of the first large-scale foreign investments in Venezuela since the US ousted its leader Nicolás Maduro in January.
The London-listed oil company holds a licence to develop the field alongside a Qatari company owned by the Al-Khayyat brothers, the Syrian-born billionaires working with Ivanka Trump, the US president’s daughter, and her husband, Jared Kushner, to build a controversial multibillion-dollar resort in Albania.
BP will also work alongside the overseas investment arm of UAE’s national oil company run by the industry minister, Sultan Al Jaber, who in 2025 promised Trump that the Gulf state would increase its investments in the US energy sector more than sixfold to $440bn (£325bn) within a decade.
The deal makes BP one of the first large-scale international oil firms to return to Venezuela after rival Shell secured a licence to develop the first phase of the Loran field earlier this summer. Caracas is also in talks over oil projects with the Italian oil company Eni.
Meg O’Neill, BP’s chief executive, described the licence as “an important step forward” in the company’s collaboration with Caracas, which “reflects the progress we have made together”.
BP is one of a handful of European oil firms that have returned to the basin since Trump called for foreign oil companies to invest “at least $100bn” to help rebuild and tap Venezuela’s oil resources after capturing the country’s former president.
The US oil companies ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips have begun scouting opportunities in Venezuela, but have been slower to play a role in its fossil fuel revival after the Latin American country nationalised the industry in 2007. Chevron remained in the country as a minority partner to Venezuela’s state oil company and has continued to produce crude.
BP’s licence was awarded almost four months after it agreed to work with the Venezuelan government to explore potential gas development. It was also one of the first big agreements struck by O’Neill, a US-born former ExxonMobil executive, in her first month at the helm.
O’Neill said: “BP has a longstanding presence in the region and deep experience developing major gas resources. Together, these agreements provide a strong foundation to progress Venezuela’s offshore gas potential and unlock the next phase of development.”
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Venezuela is believed to have the largest oil reserves of any country in the world, and in the late 1990s produced more than 3.5m barrels of a oil a day as one of the top 10 crude producers in the world. However, a quarter of a century of neglect, underinvestment and corruption have eroded its oil industry and caused output to fall to roughly 1m barrels a day.
In the months since the Trump administration seized control of Venezuela’s oil industry, oil output has climbed to 1.2m barrels a day, allowing exports to US refineries to reach their highest level since 2019.
