ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company, is exploring a return to Venezuela almost two decades after it left, NPR reported.
On Monday, the company announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Venezuelan government and the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., to examine potential "upstream" opportunities — exploration and production. An MOU is typically nonbinding. "We welcome the opportunity to evaluate potential upstream opportunities with the Venezuelan government and PDVSA," ExxonMobil said. "This memorandum is a meaningful first step. But any future investment would require stable policies, clear regulations, strong investment protections and competitive returns."
The shift comes after a turbulent year in Venezuela's oil sector. In January, shortly after the Trump administration captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump gathered U.S. oil executives at the White House and urged them to invest. ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods told attendees the country was "uninvestable." Venezuela later overhauled its petroleum law, allowing private companies more operational control in partnerships and reforming taxes and royalties. Chevron and Continental Resources have already expanded there, NPR reported. On a call with analysts last month, Woods said work was underway on "fiscal regimes," "legal regimes" and "investor protections," but "there's a way to go."
A long legal fight, and a climate question
ExxonMobil, which grew out of Standard Oil, operated in Venezuela for much of the 20th century. Beginning in 2004, then-President Hugo Chávez forcibly renegotiated contracts and ordered the nationalization of ExxonMobil assets. The company left in 2007 and has been in international arbitration since. In September 2025, a U.S. court ordered Venezuela to pay ExxonMobil more than $985 million for those expropriations, NPR reported.
Energy analysts told NPR the company may be looking at fields in the Orinoco Belt, where it has operated before and where reserves are large. Paasha Mahdavi, a political science professor at UC Santa Barbara who studies the oil industry, said extraction there generates high greenhouse gas emissions, including particularly high methane levels. "This really matters from a global climate story," he said. ExxonMobil also has large investments in neighboring Guyana, which has a long-running territorial dispute with Venezuela that is tied in part to oil rights.