Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but a tangle of legal and political uncertainty is keeping investors at arm’s length, industry experts warned at the Offshore Technology Conference 2026.
Maria Angela Capello, president at Red Tree Consulting, and Ted Borrego, energy law professor at the University of Houston Law Centre, took part in an executive dialogue titled How US energy companies are sizing up Venezuela’s revival.
The pair agreed on the scale of the opportunity but parted ways on how readily it could be seized.
Venezuela is estimated to hold 303 billion barrels of oil, at least 17 per cent of global crude reserves, with the bulk concentrated in extra-heavy crude deposits across the Orinoco Belt.
For Capello, the country’s sheer resource base puts it in a category of its own.
“Venezuela is the giant brownfield, and the frontier in the oil and gas industry today,” she said, predicting “no comparison in terms of activity, growth, appeal” as the sector opens up.
That opening accelerated in January, when Nicolás Maduro was removed from power, and a reform to the Organic Hydrocarbon Law was enacted on 29 January.
The amendment dismantled a long-standing requirement that the state holds a majority stake in all joint ventures, clearing a path for private parties to participate in upstream exploration, production and transportation.
Capello described the legislative shift as “a major breakthrough” and characterised Maduro’s removal as marking “an important opening in the way oil business is conducted”.
Borrego, however, urged caution.
A new law, he noted, is an untested law.
“Nobody has done a deal with the new hydrocarbons law yet, so we don’t know how it is going to operate for the people that are trying to go into [Venezuela],” he said.
That ambiguity extends even to those most familiar with the local legal landscape.
“Today, a local lawyer is as lost as I am. He doesn’t know what is going on,” said Borrego.
Legal uncertainty alone might be manageable, but it is compounded by a volatile political backdrop.
Following Maduro’s removal, US President Donald Trump declared that the US would “run” Venezuela.
Yet, Maduro loyalist Delcy Rodriguez currently serves as the country’s political head, apparently with US backing.
When free and fair elections might be held, and under what conditions, remains unanswered.
The history of US sanctions on Venezuela’s energy sector adds another layer of complexity.
Even under a pro-extraction administration, operators building long-term strategies must account for the possibility of abrupt policy reversals in Washington.
For upstream investors weighing the risk-reward calculation, conservatism is an increasingly rational response.
Borrego was direct about the remedy, stating: “You want the general legal framework to be in place, and to know that it is going to stay in place for a long time.”
Capello acknowledged the same need, while remaining more bullish on near-term prospects.
“There are opportunities in the short-term that we are already looking at,” she said.
However, she conceded that sustained investment would require more than optimism.
“To really push investments into the Venezuelan oil industry […] you need to organise the legal and financial elements, to enable confidence in the system,” said Capello.
Until that confidence is established, Venezuela’s vast reserves risk remaining untapped.
