Shares in supermajor Chevron and the biggest U.S. refiners soared in pre-market trade on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump opened the door to American investment in Venezuela’s oil industry following the capture of Nicolas Maduro.
Chevron, which is currently the only U.S. and Western oil firm authorized by the United States to operate in Venezuela, saw its shares jump by 6% in pre-market trade.
Chevron, as well as other integrated U.S. oil companies, are set to benefit from the touted opening of Venezuela’s oil sector to U.S. investment.
U.S. refiners, for their part, will also benefit from increased flows of Venezuela’s heavy crude to the U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, which are configured to run on heavier crudes and have had to replace Venezuelan oil since 2019 with higher imports from Canada and some Arab Gulf producers such as Iraq.
Shares in the biggest refiners, Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy, Phillips 66, and PBF Energy surged by between 5% and 12% in pre-market trade on Monday.
The capture of Nicolas Maduro was followed by claims by President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that American oil companies would be very interested in rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industry.
“We’re going to have our very large U.S. oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” President Trump said on Saturday, shortly after the Venezuelan leader was captured and flown to the U.S. to face drug cartel-related charges.
Rubio, for his part, told ABC in an interview on Sunday “Our refineries in the Gulf Coast of the United States are the best in terms of refining this heavy crude, and there’s actually been a shortage of heavy crude around the world, so I think there would be tremendous demand and interest from private industry if given the space to do it, if given the opportunity to do it.”
By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com
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