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TotalEnergies is heading back to Venezuela. The French energy major signed a memorandum of understanding with PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, on September 19, laying the groundwork for a return to the country’s hydrocarbon operations after a half-decade absence.
The ceremony took place at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, overseen by acting President Delcy Rodríguez. PDVSA President Héctor Obregón and TotalEnergies Senior Vice President for the Americas, Francisco Javier Rielo, put pen to paper on a deal focused on “strategic cooperation in hydrocarbons.”
From writedown to write-back
TotalEnergies exited Venezuela’s upstream operations in 2021, taking a $1.4 billion writedown in the process. The landscape has shifted considerably since Maduro’s ouster in January 2026. Venezuela’s post-Maduro government has been aggressively courting the international energy firms that once fled, passing reforms to the country’s Organic Hydrocarbons Law designed to sweeten the deal for foreign capital. The revised legal framework gives international companies expanded operational roles, a critical change from the rigid state-control model that defined the Maduro era.
TotalEnergies had been in discussions about trading arrangements with Venezuelan counterparts as recently as April 2026, signaling that its renewed interest predates the formal MoU by several months.
BP, Eni, Repsol, and Chevron have all struck comparable agreements with Venezuela’s new government this year.
The prize underneath
Venezuela sits atop approximately 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the largest of any country on Earth. Yet the country currently produces under 1 million barrels per day, a fraction of its potential and a shadow of the roughly 3 million barrels per day it pumped in the late 1990s.
For context, TotalEnergies reported total hydrocarbon production of around 2.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day across its global portfolio in recent years.
What this means for global oil markets
Venezuela, an OPEC member, adding hundreds of thousands of barrels per day to global supply over the coming years could complicate OPEC+’s output quota calculations.
A memorandum of understanding is not a production-sharing agreement. The details of operational, financial, or contractual aspects of the current MoU remain undisclosed. The real test comes when specific terms, investment commitments, production targets, and revenue-sharing arrangements get negotiated.
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