Bloomberg Surveillance · Friday, September 4, 2026
Despite potential accommodations from Venezuela's government towards the U.S., the production of its heavy oil is expected to remain marginal. This limitation is due to a lack of specialized refineries capable of processing the crude and existing bottlenecks in market access. While Chevron continues operations, China's significant concession on reserves raises questions about when they will be repaid, given past expropriations and the difficulty in processing Venezuelan crude.
“Chevron is going to continue to operate there. They've got two, three hundred thousand barrels a day of production. They can extend it a little bit. Keep in mind, of course, China's there. China has a concession on four billion barrels of so-called reserves. We don't know what those numbers are. Chevron's has a lot of issues they have to deal with here in the U.S. Their purchase of Noble has brought them a huge bunch of liabilities, back office with ownership issues that they really haven't dealt with yet.”
“I think China stands behind Exxon, who is still waiting to be paid for the second or third expropriation they had in Venezuela. The paper is only as good as the paper it's written on.”
“No, not at all. It's marginal. We had a bunch of oil bottled up with the sanctions. They couldn't take it to market. And a lot of the Venezuelan crude is really the heavy asphalt stuff. It's difficult to get into the market. We have a few refineries left on the Gulf Coast that can handle it.”