By Ryan Dezember
America's top oil producers have expressed hesitancy about rushing back to Venezuela, but the companies that provide them with equipment and expertise are raring to go.
"We left only because of the U.S. sanctions that were put in place and have effectively been evaluating how to return ever since," Halliburton Chief Executive Officer Jeff Miller said in an interview. "I see this as that moment in time where we get to execute on plans to return."
When it comes to increasing Venezuelan oil production, investors are betting that the early returns will go to oil-field services companies such as Halliburton, Baker Hughes and SLB, formerly known as Schlumberger.
Such companies are the early movers in the oil patch, working for Texas wildcatters and national oil companies alike. Whichever producers heed President Trump's call to open Venezuela's spigots, it will be oil-field services companies that sell the handle and do the turning.
Trump has made increased oil production essential to his plans for Venezuela since the U.S. incursion this month deposed the strongman Nicolás Maduro. Besides saying he would wrest control of the country's oil reserves and sell crude for the benefit of the U.S. and Venezuelans, Trump envisions Venezuelan heavy crude flooding into Gulf Coast refineries and pushing down fuel prices.
While Venezuela claims the world's largest oil reserves, two decades of mismanagement and underinvestment has reduced its crude output from more than 3 million barrels a day to less than 1 million.
"Oilfield service companies are often the quiet beneficiaries of chaos turning into order," said Mark Malek, chief investment officer at Siebert Financial. "If Venezuelan production ever moves meaningfully above its current sub-1-million-barrel-per-day level, it will not happen without them."
Analysts and energy executives have estimated that rehabilitating Venezuela's oil field could require $10 billion a year for many years.
"There's a lot of money to be spent there," said Simon Wong, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds. "A big chunk will be spent with these companies for the equipment, for their technical knowledge."
Services-company share prices were already on the upswing because of increased drilling in the Middle East and big offshore projects that would keep them working for years, when the U.S. incursion boosted them further.
The strong performers include Halliburton and SLB, up 16% and 21%, respectively, in January, as well as the drilling-rig owners Nabors Industries and Helmerich & Payne. The latter company, which started drilling in Venezuela in the 1950s, has been battling the state-oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, also known as PdVSA, in court for the past 14 years over $90 million in unpaid invoices and 11 rigs that the country nationalized.
"Any consideration of future activity would depend on a careful evaluation of potential partnerships, political and economic conditions and appropriate legal and financial protections," a Helmerich & Payne spokeswoman said.
Investors will be listening for more about companies' plans next week. Halliburton and SLB are scheduled to report quarterly results on Wednesday and Friday, respectively.
"We have almost 100 years of experience in Venezuela, and we continue to have operational facilities, equipment and local personnel in country," SLB Chief Executive Olivier Le Peuch said in a statement. "We are confident that under the right conditions, operating licenses and safety environment, we can ramp up activities quickly."
The eagerness of service companies to return despite past problems contrasts with the halting approach expressed by some of the largest U.S. producers.
"We've had our assets seized there twice," Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods said last week at a White House meeting with Trump and other executives. "You can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we've historically seen here and what is currently the state."
Those remarks earned a rebuke from Trump, who later said he was "inclined to keep Exxon out."
"I didn't like their response," the president told reporters. "They're playing too cute."
Trump was pleased with the White House comments from Halliburton's Miller, who told the president that the company was "very much interested in returning" to a country where he had once been stationed and raised his children.
"Great job," Trump said. "You'll be back."
Miller, a fluent Spanish speaker, was Halliburton's head of business development in Venezuela when Hugo Chávez was elected president and began to nationalize the country's energy industry. Conditions then began to deteriorate for international companies.
Halliburton started working in Venezuela in 1938, and it left in 2019 because of U.S. sanctions. The company would need licenses from the U.S. to return and then various permissions and licenses to operate within the country.
The company also needs assurance that it would be paid for its work, Miller said. Other risks there are manageable, he said.
"We didn't leave Venezuela because of the risk," he said. "We've worked in markets that I view as much more difficult than Venezuela; I don't see that as a barrier to re-entry."
The assets that Halliburton left behind in 2019 aren't very important, he said, compared with the company's ability to move in new equipment to rehab Venezuela's existing oil fields and energy infrastructure and provide services such as reservoir evaluation.
"The first order of business is intervention and workover services, getting more barrels out of the wells that are already there," Miller said. "Drilling new wells is the next step."
Write to Ryan Dezember at ryan.dezember@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 16, 2026 05:30 ET (10:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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