The question came to Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of French oil giant TotalEnergies, at a news conference in the Middle East:

Would Total, one of the seven largest oil companies in the world, be interested in investing in the rejuvenation of Venezuela’s struggling, decaying oil industry?

Apparently, Pouyanné wasted little time in answering. He was in no rush, he said.

The company once had operations in Venezuela since the 1990s. The challenges were great, andthe assets were ultimately taken over by the Venezuelan government in 2022.

Pouyanné isn’t game to try again.

The challenges of Venezuelan oil

Besides, Venezuela’s oil industry suffered from multiple problems, despite the fact that the country has some of the biggest oil reserves in the world.

  • Venezuela’s oil is difficult to work with.
    It is thick and needs additives to make it easy to refine.
  • The oil is heavy in sulfur, for the most part. That is, the oil contains more than 1% sulfur, enough to cause corrosion, poison refinery catalysts and air pollution.
    To meet environmental standards in many of Total’s markets would require a new layer of refining and expense.
  • Bribery and theft have been endemic.

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Just to make refined Venezuelan products saleable in much of the world would require immediate investments of $100 billion, maybe more, just to start growing the country’s production again. $100 billion was the investment level President Trump was looking for.

And it would take years to get production up from 1 million barrels of oil now to, say, 3 million barrels, Pouyanné said in Abu Dhabi.

Total is a big oil company, with oil and gas production in Asia, the Americas, Africa, Europe and the Middle East and North Africa.

Revenue in 2025 was $182.3 billion for the Paris-based company, down slightly from a year earlier. Net income of $13.1 billion was off 17% from 2024.

It is a consumer-facing company; its service stations are a familiar sight across Europe and Asia. It’s big in motorsports, sponsoring teams in Formula 1 and 2, for example.

TotalEnergies is an oil supermajor with little interest in operating in Venezuela again.

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Sometimes, it’s better to look elsewhere

Oil companies have to produce fuel and lubricants and absorb huge amounts of criticism from environmental groups, activists and the like.

And Total, Pouyanné knew, had concluded it was better to look for oil reserves that weren’t heavy, didn’t have much sulfur — if any  — and allowed for lower production costs and much smaller environmental impacts.

When Total pulled out of Venezuela in 2022, Pouyanné said in Abu Dhabi, working in the country “clashed with our strategy. It was too expensive and too polluting.” And he added, “That is still the case.”

And there was, in Pouyanné’s mind, an equally large problem: political risk. Even if, in early January, United States forces had swooped into Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, and seized President Nicolas Maduro on drug trafficking charges.

Maduro is now in custody in the United States.

It is true that some Venezuelan crude is starting to be shipped to U.S. refineries operated by Marathon, Valero and Phillips 66. A load of oil was recently sent to Israel, Bloomberg reported.

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Despite all that, much of Venezuela’s old political apparatus was still in place, and there was no telling when they might seize operations yet again and refuse to compensate the companies for their losses.

So, one hears Total and just about all oil companies saying the legal structure has to be rebuilt so that doing business in Venezuela is predictable.

And bad things can happen. One night in 2002, a Conoco Phillips executive and his wife had just arrived in Caracas and were kidnapped at gunpoint before they could leave the airport.

So, personal safety is a very big question to Pouyanné, especially since the Trump Administration doesn’t want to put forces in the country. What it has been doing is selling oil and putting the proceeds in banks abroad under the control of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Politico reported.

ConocoPhillips has said it won’t reinvest in Venezuela until compensated for its past losses. The company is still pursuing a $12 billion claim against Venezuela and PDVSA, the state-owned company.

Once in a while, Conoco gets lucky. In 2018, it seized barrels of oil stored in the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curaçao, Bonaire and Sint Eustatius in the Caribbean, The Wall Street Journal reported in January. 

The sales of the oil subsequently netted Conoco about $283 million.

Related: Chevron, oil execs send strong message on Venezuela