ExxonMobil CEO: Venezuela 'a huge resource...opened up more freely to the world'

In a call with analysts following the release of first-quarter 2026 results, ExxonMobil’s chairman and chief executive officer Darren Woods was asked about the operator’s initial assessment of the situation in Venezuela after having sent an evaluation team to the country earlier this year. 

Woods has evolved somewhat his view of future investment opportunities in Venezuela after noting in January that the state of the country at the time of former-president Nicolas Maduro’s ouster left the country “uninvestable.”

A few months later, ExxonMobil upstream president Dan Ammann told a conference audience in Houston that the company had an evaluation team on the ground. At the time, Ammann said the operator would be evaluating infrastructure readiness, fiscal terms, and stability to support long‑cycle upstream investment before any commitment to large‑scale redevelopment in the country.

On the earnings call May 1, CEO Woods called Venezuela “a huge resource that's now opened up more freely to the world.”

He said work by the oil and gas industry, the Trump administration, and the government of Venezuela continues “to get the context of that opportunity shaped” to represent attractive investment opportunities.

“The oil in Venezuela is very heavy and therefore requires a lot of effort to get the production up and get it onto the market,” Woods said, noting that the company’s continued technology advancements in Canada’s heavy-oil region “positions [ExxonMobil] uniquely in terms of low-cost production of the Venezuela resources…when the context is right and the investment and the returns look promising.”

Wood said given the right set of circumstances, ExxonMobil could “apply that technology and produce those barrels at a much lower cost of supply than many of our competitors.”