Chevron plans to double its Venezuela oil production

Chevron plans to double its Venezuela oil production

Chevron announced early Wednesday that it has reached an agreement to expand its oil production in Venezuela.

The company said the deal would more than double its current oil production in Venezuela, bringing it up to 600,000 barrels per day.

It added that the effort will be done through a joint venture, in which Chevron’s subsidiary holds 49 percent interest.

Chevron said that the joint venture plans to spend more than $7 billion over the next five years. It said as part of the deal, it was assigned additional acres in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt, an area where much of Venezuela’s heavy crude oil can be found, and where it already has an established position.

Chevron is the only major U.S. oil company that currently has operations in Venezuela. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips left in 2007.

The agreement is expected to be separate from the Trump administration’s own recent announcement that it would team up with Venezuelan oil company North American Blue Energy Partners and gain access to some 21 percent of the country’s estimated oil deposits.

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