US confident Venezuela oil deal will attract investors: Wright

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sept. 2 he was confident that North American Blue Energy Partners, the private operator at the center of Washington's new crude production agreement with Venezuela, could give US companies the legal certainty they need to invest in the South American country.

Speaking to CNBC in Caracas hours before deals were due to be signed at the Miraflores presidential palace, Wright said the arrangement's core purpose was to rebuild private-sector confidence in a country where foreign oil majors have seen assets seized. Amid legal and political questions raised by analysts since its announcement on Aug. 28, Wright described the deal as a partnership to develop reserves rather than a US takeover of Venezuelan oil.

"Business drives progress," he said. "Business will drive the growth of oil and gas production in Venezuela ... The United States government will not be the operator or producer of those reserves."

NABEP, debt questions

NABEP, touted in an Aug. 31 White House fact sheet as Venezuela's second-largest private producer, is led by Alejandro Bettencourt, who was arrested in the UK twice in 2025 after Spanish and Swiss authorities accused him, respectively, of money laundering and embezzlement, including charges related to PDVSA, Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Betancourt was never formally charged in Venezuela, Spain, or Switzerland.

After CNBC's Brian Sullivan said some in the industry regarded Betancourt as a "shadowy figure," Wright said NABEP was "a very competent operator" and attributed its prominence in the news to conflicts with the previous regime in Caracas.

On Sept. 1, NABEP announced plans to invest nearly $100 billion to expand its operations and lift oil production above 1 million b/d under the agreement. The agreement with the US departments of State and Defense would support an expansion in the Lake Maracaibo region and the Orinoco Oil Belt, NABEP said in a statement. The company said it currently controls marketing rights over more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela's P1 reserves.

The US government will have rights to a 35% interest in NABEP while the company retains operational control. Washington will also have preferential access to purchase 20% of production at cost, the company said in the statement.

"This operation will allow us to unlock that potential for the substantial benefit of both Venezuelans and Americans," CEO Alejandro Betancourt said.

In a Sept. 2 interview with Bloomberg TV, Wright said that China would not have any claim to production or revenue related to the 17 fields in the NABEP deal.

"Venezuela's got a lot of historic debt, and one of the major efforts going on right now is to do a debt restructuring to get things in order," he said. "Who are the real creditors? What is an arrangement going to do to move forward? But no, these fields will be developed for the benefit of the Venezuelan people, the benefit of Americans, and the benefit of global energy markets."

Investor confidence

Wright argued that US oversight would underpin investor protections. The structure relies on US enforcement of contracts, he said, and its agreement with NABEP is governed by US law and subject to US courts. Asked whether majors such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips -- both of which had Venezuelan assets expropriated when former president Hugo Chavez forced companies to accept majority state control in 2007 -- could trust new contracts, Wright said the deal moved "the needle in the right direction."

"It's one thing for a government to expropriate assets of private corporations," he said. "It's another thing to expropriate assets that are owned by the United States of America."

During the interview, Wright reiterated his forecast that Venezuelan production would rise 50% within 12-18 months of the US action. Current production rose to 1.213 million b/d in August, according to preliminary data from the Ministry of Hydrocarbons, up from below 1 million b/d before the Jan. 3 US operation to seize former president Nicolas Maduro.

PDVSA has said it expects to reach crude oil production of 1.37 million b/d by December, while Wright projected output would exceed 1.5 million b/d in the first half of 2027 and top 2 million b/d by the end of the decade, calling the added supply "downward pressure on oil prices globally."

On Sept. 2, Chevron announced plans to spend $7 billion to double its crude production in the country to nearly 600,000 b/d by 2031, unveiling updates to existing joint ventures it said would boost future investments and asset development.

In a client note, Rystad Energy Senior Vice President Radhika Bansal forecast a "feasible pathway" to more than 3 million b/d of Venezuelan production by 2045, based on the known details of the deal. But Bansal noted the durability of the deal would rely on long-term internal political clarity.

"Investors looking at multi-decade projects need confidence that a contract signed today will be honored by whoever governs Venezuela in 10 or 20 years," he wrote. "The political reaction inside the country, with criticism coming from both Chavista and opposition circles, is a signal that durability is not guaranteed."

US SPR

Wright also downplayed the impact Venezuelan crude would have on the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. On Aug. 30, US President Donald Trump, in a post on his social media network Truth Social, said he was going to "fill up" the SPR with "Venezuelan Oil."

However, the White House's fact sheet said that Venezuelan production through the joint deal could "facilitate" refilling the SPR, while Wright acknowledged Venezuela's dense grades cannot necessarily be injected directly into the reserve's salt caverns.

In an email, Dr. Siddharth Misra, a Professor of Engineering at Texas A&M University and the Chief Technology Officer of AlterNature LLC, told Platts Venezuela's heavy Merey-16 crude is too thick and viscous to be stored in US SPR facilities and would lead to fluid mechanics problems, recovery issues, and sludge at the bottom of the caverns -- or require "massive, disproportionate" volumes of light condensate to blend down. Platts is part of S&P Global Energy.

"It behaves more like thick molasses than liquid oil," Misra wrote. "It fails both the physical density and chemical criteria of the SPR."

Still, Misra noted that other, lighter Venezuelan crude grades, like Santa Barbara and Mesa 30, could be suitable for the SPR's specifications, which require crudes to maintain a light gravity ranging from 30 to 40 API and a total sulfur content of 1.99 mass percent.

In the CNBC interview, Wright said heavy crude could also be swapped on the market for domestic light or medium barrels more suited to refilling the reserve.

"It doesn't mean that exactly these barrels go in," he said.