Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on Tuesday pitched her vision for a private sector-led oil industry, in a push for majors to invest in the South American country.
“First of all, the role of the Venezuelan state will get out of the way,” she said at CERAWeek by S&P Global in Houston.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner was met with a standing ovation inside a cavernous ballroom at a hotel in downtown Houston. About 10,000 industry executives and ministers were expected to attend the week-long gathering.
Chevron is the only US company with operations in Venezuela after former president Hugo Chavez seized assets from American oil majors about 20 years ago.
Chevron chief executive Mike Wirth on Monday told those at the conference that more work needs to be done to secure conditions for investment.
"There's still things that need to happen to encourage investment at the scale that people would like to see," he said.
Venezuela's National Assembly in January also approved oil law reforms in January, but Mr Wirth said he wanted to see specific incentives.
"At one end of the range we have investments that look attractive; at another of the range you have investments that probably wouldn't, so there's discretion and some ambiguity or uncertainty that still exists in the law that I think you can tighten up," he said.
The country has an estimated 303 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, but its output has plunged from 4 million bpd in the 1970s to about 1.1 million bpd today. President Donald Trump has said US companies would rebuild Venezuela's energy infrastructure, a project with a projected price tag of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Ms Machado pledged a democratic Venezuelan government would provide robust security to protect companies' assets and employees, a state that acts only as a regulator, private property rights, flexible contracts and royalties capped at 25 per cent.
“So here's my invitation directed to every single one of you. Our team is ready to greet operators and investors on every aspect of our energy framework," she said.
Ms Machado said a democratic Venezuela should be fully transparent and strong institutions.
“And I of course, refer to the legal, fiscal and contractual architecture that attracts and protects capital over decades,” she said.
The Trump administration has been pushing oil companies to re-enter Venezuela after the capture of President Nicolas Maduro in January, and the Treasury Department has taken gradual steps to ease sanctions on Caracas.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright held talks with the interim Venezuelan interim president Delcy Rodriguez last month.
“We just talked about where we are and what the United States wants and what's good for Venezuela,” Mr Wright told the audience on Monday.
“And most of those overlap, having more secure rule of law, reducing criminality, growing Venezuelan production, changing labour laws [and] ultimately, court systems."
