@jolyon🇺🇸🇻🇪 Exxon is nearing a deal to return to Venezuela, 19 years after Chávez seized its assets there The company could sign a memorandum with state-run PDVSA this month covering fields holding more than 50 billion barrels, though talks could still collapse. Chevron committed $7 billion over five years to double its output to 600,000 barrels a day, and Harold Hamm's Continental Resources signed its own preliminary deal Wednesday. Back in January, Exxon CEO Darren Woods sat in the White House and called Venezuela "uninvestable" without real changes to its laws. Caracas has since rewritten its oil rules and cut production taxes. Woods got exactly what he asked for, which is the part worth noticing. Washington pushed for $100 billion in the ground and the majors said no until the legal terms changed, then the terms changed. Every barrel that comes out of the Orinoco is a barrel that does not have to sail past Iranian guns or Houthi artillery, and with Hormuz at a trickle and the Red Sea gone, hemispheric oil stops being an ideological preference and becomes the supply chain. The company Chávez humiliated in 2007 may end up holding the fields that insulate American refineries from the next Gulf crisis. Source: The Wall Street Journal / Writer: Daniel

@jolyon🇺🇸🇻🇪 Exxon is nearing a deal to return to Venezuela, 19 years after Chávez seized its assets there The company could sign a memorandum with state-run PDVSA this month covering fields holding more than 50 billion barrels, though talks could still collapse. Chevron committed $7 billion over five years to double its output to 600,000 barrels a day, and Harold Hamm's Continental Resources signed its own preliminary deal Wednesday. Back in January, Exxon CEO Darren Woods sat in the White House and called Venezuela "uninvestable" without real changes to its laws. Caracas has since rewritten its oil rules and cut production taxes. Woods got exactly what he asked for, which is the part worth noticing. Washington pushed for $100 billion in the ground and the majors said no until the legal terms changed, then the terms changed. Every barrel that comes out of the Orinoco is a barrel that does not have to sail past Iranian guns or Houthi artillery, and with Hormuz at a trickle and the Red Sea gone, hemispheric oil stops being an ideological preference and becomes the supply chain. The company Chávez humiliated in 2007 may end up holding the fields that insulate American refineries from the next Gulf crisis. Source: The Wall Street Journal / Writer: Daniel