GeoPark announced its strategic entry into Venezuela through the Bare Block, a large-scale heavy-oil brownfield asset in the Orinoco Belt with roughly 15.7 billion barrels of original oil in place, over 700 million barrels of historical production, and about 1,100 existing wells.
The US reached a deal with Venezuela giving Washington majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. President Donald Trump announced August 28, calling it “the greatest oil deal in world history” on Truth Social.
The U.S.-Venezuela “Trump” oil deal is structured around North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a private operator controlled by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, which could invest up to US$100 billion aiming to lift production from just over 200,000 bd to more than 1.5 million bd.
Ecopetrol CFO Camilo Barco left the door open to eventually evaluating opportunities in Venezuela, even as the company keeps its immediate growth focus on markets where it already operates — Colombia, Brazil, the U.S. Permian, and nine other countries.
Venezuela sits on more than 300 billion barrels of proven crude reserves — surpassing Saudi Arabia’s roughly 270 billion — yet produces just 850,000 to 1.1 million bd, less than 1% of global output and far below its 1998 peak of 3.5 million bd, according to Álvaro Martínez de Bourio, BCG’s energy lead for Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina.
Colombo-Venezuelan petrochemical company Monómeros Colombo Venezolanos S.A. has been rescued from insolvency after the Superintendency of Companies confirmed a reorganization agreement in hearings held on July 3 and 10, ending a sixteen-month legal process that began when Supersociedades initiated ex officio reorganization proceedings in March 2025 following a financial deterioration that threatened the company’s viability as a going concern.
Vice president-elect José Manuel Restrepo met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the State Department on July 15 for a 45-minute bilateral meeting that both sides described as the opening of a new chapter in Colombia-US relations, one in which energy and hydrocarbons figured as a central substantive thread beneath the diplomatic framing.
Venezuela’s interim government published sweeping new petroleum sector regulations on July 9, following up on changes to the petroleum law introduced in recent months.
Venezuela’s oil production emerged intact from the two earthquakes — magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 — that struck the north of the country in late June, killing more than 3,500 people and causing widespread infrastructure damage.
Spain’s Repsol has signed a memorandum of understanding with Venezuela’s Ministry of Hydrocarbons and state oil company PDVSA to study the development of a new oil area called Horcón, located southeast of Lake Maracaibo — a zone adjacent to fields where Repsol already holds operations.
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