Equinor Does Not Plan to Return to Venezuela
January 8, 2026
Equinor does not plan a return to Venezuela, after leaving the country in the early part of this decade, the Norwegian oil and gas company's CEO told Reuters on Wednesday.
"At the moment, that's not on the table," Anders Opedal said on the sidelines of a business conference. "We pulled out of Venezuela because we wanted to reallocate capital."
Raising crude output from Venezuela, which sits on the world's largest oil reserves, is a top objective for U.S. President Donald Trump after U.S. forces seized the country's leader Nicolas Maduro on Saturday.
Equinor entered Venezuela's oil and gas industry in the mid-1990s, investing billions of dollars onshore and offshore and identifying the country as a core part of its operation, but ultimately pulled out after some 25 years.
Donald Trump plans to meet with oil company executives late this week to discuss ways to revive Venezuela's tattered oil sector, three sources familiar with the matter have said.
Equinor's Opedal said rebuilding Venezuela's oil industry to extract more of the country's heavy oil will demand huge investment.
(Reuters - Reporting by Nora Buli, editing by Terje Solsvik, Kirsten Donovan)
