Trump’s Venezuelan Oil Company Plans Massive Drilling Push

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Trump’s Venezuelan Oil Company Plans Massive Drilling Push

Company led by Alejandro Betancourt plans to dispatch more than 50 drilling rigs to turbocharge the country’s anemic crude production

By Collin Eaton, WSJ

Aug. 31, 2026

Alejandro Betancourt’s North American Blue Energy Partners plans to deploy more than 50 drilling rigs to Venezuela over the next few years.

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The Venezuelan oil company run by businessman Alejandro Betancourt plans to dispatch more than 50 drilling rigs to the Latin American country over the next few years, a massive rollout meant to turbocharge the country’s anemic crude production.

Betancourt’s North American Blue Energy Partners, recently backed by the Trump administration, is aiming to move six drilling rigs into its Venezuelan oil fields by the end of 2026, according to an internal document viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Next year, it plans to deploy 12 more rigs and, in 2028 and beyond, an additional two rigs a month. The total is eventually expected to reach 52.

The document shows the first glimpse of how Trump’s controversial deal to take a direct stake in some of Venezuela’s prized oil fields might work. Legal experts and oil industry executives have raised concerns about whether the transaction is legal under Venezuela’s constitution, and if the plan would survive political changes in Venezuela and the U.S.

“This raises more uncertainties” for companies looking to invest in Venezuela, said Ed Chow, a former Chevron executive and nonresident senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “For a capital intensive, long-term industry, uncertainty slows you down. Sometimes it freezes you.”

Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt poses for a picture in Madrid.

Alejandro Betancourt stringer/Reuters

Under Trump’s plan, the U.S. would take a direct stake in NABEP, which plans to develop 17 Venezuelan oil fields that house some 65 billion barrels of oil, or one-fifth of the country’s reserves. NABEP aims to operate many of its fields independently, according to people familiar with the matter.

A company spokesman said NABEP doesn’t comment on commercial matters.

U.S. officials have said the state-backed company would be the second-largest corporate holder of proven reserves after Saudi Aramco.

Venezuela, which is home to some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves, has seen production dwindle over the past decade to about 1.2 million barrels a day.

Estimates of the number of active drilling rigs there vary widely—from two to two dozen. In any case, the total is a far cry from the 220 rigs that were active in 2014, when the country was pumping about 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, analysts said.

NABEP has acquired 23 new drilling rigs sourced from U.S. rig contractors Helmerich & Payne, Precision Drilling and Patterson-UTI Energy, the documents show. It has plans for about 30 workover rigs, which help maintain, repair and boost output from existing oil wells. Many of those rigs are currently under construction.

The company is paying for the drilling campaign itself, with cash flow from its oil production, the people familiar said. NABEP pumps 200,000 barrels of oil a day and is the second-largest private producer in Venezuela behind Chevron.

The deal with the Trump administration could help it eclipse the U.S. oil giant’s output in the Latin American country in a few years, the people said. Chevron, the only major U.S. oil company operating in Venezuela, currently produces almost 300,000 barrels a day there.