Exxon Mobil: Team Assessing Venezuela Investment Potential


   
Maria Eugenia Garcia
DTN Energy Editor

   HOUSTON, TX (DTN) -- ExxonMobil has a team in Venezuela this week assessing 
the possibility of investing in the country's oil and gas industry over the 
long-term, Dan Ammann, head of the company's upstream business, said Wednesday 
(3/25).

   "We have a team there this week on the ground," Amman told reporters on the 
sidelines of S&P Global conference's CERAWeek. "Obviously, there's a tremendous 
amount of resource there; 300 million barrels of proven reserves."

   Scaling Venezuela's current crude production of below 1 million bpd today to 
its heyday output of 3 million bpd would probably require "hundreds of billions 
of dollars in investment over a very long period of time," said Ammann.

   He noted that despite some reforms to the Venezuelan hydrocarbon industry, 
Exxon was still assessing whether the country had the right conditions to 
encourage such an investment.

   The company also had other investment options, such as Brazil, which 
produces four times as much oil as Venezuela, Ammann said.

   The Trump administration, which took charge of Venezuela's oil after 
capturing its former leader Nicolas Maduro in January, has urged U.S. oil 
companies to invest up to $100 billion to rebuild the country's petroleum 
industry.

   ExxonMobil has, however, taken for a more cautious approach, tying any 
potential investment to stability in the Latin American country, which is still 
run by a leftist regime.




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