White House officials will travel to Venezuela on Thursday to announce several agreements that could lay the groundwork for several oil and mining companies to operate in the country, three people familiar with the matter said Wednesday.
The memorandums of understanding that the Trump administration facilitated would not immediately result in more oil being produced in Venezuela, but could open the door for additional supplies to be exported in the coming years. It could also crack the door wider for outside oil firms to enter the country after an earlier reluctance to work with a regime that had nationalized foreign oil companies’ assets more than a decade ago.
Officials in Caracas are also planning to unveil memorandums of understanding tied to gold and aluminum and possibly coal projects, said an industry official familiar with the administration’s plan. Those agreements are likely to pertain to existing mines and require offtake agreements back to the U.S., the official said.
National Energy Dominance Council Executive Director Jarrod Agen and other NEDC members will attend the planned meeting in Caracas. Among those also attending the meeting will be executives from Dallas-based private oil company Hunt Oil, European oil companies Repsol and Eni, Venezuela’s state-owned petrochemical company Petroquímica de Venezuela, U.S. oilfield services company Halliburton and several trading companies, said the three people, who were granted anonymity to discuss non-public planning.
