Chevron CFO explains outlook for ramping up oil production in Venezuela

Chevron (CVX) CFO Eimear Bonner outlines the energy giant's outlook for oil (CL=F, BZ=F) production in Venezuela as the company continues to ramp up output in the region.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

between Venezuela and and Chevron. Um, I believe you all have said you've you've you expect to fully recover what you're owed there by early next year. Um, so what does that look like and then what does beyond that look like in terms of Chevron's involvement there?

00:16 Speaker B

Sure, yes. Well we have, as you know, three joint ventures that we participate in and we've successfully grown production from less than 50,000 barrels a day to 250,000 barrels a day over a few years. That's the rate at which we entered this year.

00:39 Speaker B

And we have continued to grow production this year. In fact, we grew production 15% over the course of the second quarter. So our operations in Venezuela are running extremely well, uninterrupted from the unfortunate earthquake that our colleagues experienced and we've been also looking out for them and ensuring the safety of our colleagues there.

01:03 Speaker B

But as we turn to the future, last quarter, we executed a swap in Venezuela that enabled us to get more working interest in a field that we have, and we also got some contiguous acreage, so an area close to one of our operating assets that makes for um capital light, um tiebacks or capital light developments. So we have that in hand.

01:25 Speaker B

As we look to the future, we're also in active discussions with the government about about additional areas. Um, we are uh we are encouraged by the conversations thus far. and what we're talking about is how do we ensure that the terms associated with those areas would be competitive, would be durable, would have um all the protections needed to attract capital. um and we uh we have a long list of options.

01:50 Speaker B

And so we uh we need to ensure that the Venezuela options for the future compete. With regard to the the debt, we have been getting our debt recovered. We will um have our balance, we we project our balance will be paid off by early early next year. And then, you know, that that's that's great and we'll continue

02:08 Speaker B

to use the self- funding model that we have to continue to grow production and we anticipate we'll grow it by 50% by the end of 2028. So lots's happening in the operations that we're running today and also encouraged by the options that could be um shored up for the future.

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