Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez and Cederic Cremers, President of Built-in Gasoline at Shell plc, discuss throughout a gathering with Shell representatives at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, February 26, 2026
| Photograph Credit score: Reuters
Venezuela’s Oil Ministry has suspended 19 oil production-sharing contracts with non-public firms signed below the administration of President Nicolas Maduro, 4 sources with data of the transfer instructed Reuters on Thursday (February 26, 2026).
The suspension has had no influence on the nation’s oil and fuel output up to now, the sources stated. State oil large PDVSA is promoting the crude produced below the contracts whereas they’re suspended, they added.
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Caracas and Washington would evaluate the contracts and should advocate revoking a few of them, the sources stated. The Venezuelan and U.S. governments are reviewing the credentials of the businesses that signed them, the sources added. A number of the firms are little-known and the offers had been signed whereas Venezuela was below U.S. sanctions.
The contracts below evaluate embody initiatives that not too long ago started producing oil in difficult areas similar to Lake Maracaibo, large ventures that purpose to increase output within the Orinoco Belt, Venezuela’s essential oil area, and small mature oilfields.
Mr. Maduro’s administration had little success securing funding via the production-sharing contract mannequin as giant oil gamers rejected a return to Venezuela after expropriations or averted doing enterprise with it attributable to U.S. sanctions.
The gamers that took on production-sharing contracts included Chinese language, U.S., South American and Venezuelan corporations, in addition to some firms registered in tax haven nations, and a few obtained contracts in a number of areas, based on an inventory seen by Reuters.
A number of the firms additionally outsourced the oilfields to contractors, two of the sources stated.
The US captured Mr. Maduro in January and took management of Venezuela’s oil exports and gross sales. Since then, the U.S. Treasury Division has issued common licenses that enable firms to commerce Venezuela’s oil and to function within the nation’s oil and fuel sectors, however require particular clearance by the Treasury’s Workplace of Overseas Belongings Management.
Venezuela’s Nationwide Meeting handed a reform to the nation’s hydrocarbon regulation in late January to facilitate international funding within the dilapidated oil trade. Beneath the reformed regulation, the federal government has six months to evaluate present contracts.
Venezuela’s ministries of oil and communications and the White Home didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The ministry and PDVSA are individually in talks with lots of Venezuela’s conventional joint-venture companions, together with Chevron, Repsol and Maurel & Promenade, to permit them to increase the oilfields already assigned to their initiatives, which may contribute to elevated crude and fuel output.
Printed – February 27, 2026 07:52 am IST