By Benoît Morenne
The man in charge of Conoco's Venezuela operations looked up to see a gun pointed at his driver's head.
It was early 2002 and Roger Ramshaw and his wife had just landed at the airport in Caracas. Within seconds of entering their private car, the couple was kidnapped and a masked gunman ordered Ramshaw to take him to their apartment so he could steal their cash -- or else.
"It's one of these traumatic experiences," Ramshaw said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "It takes a while to get over it."
As Houston-based ConocoPhillips ponders President Trump's demand that U.S. oil-and-gas producers invest at least $100 billion in Venezuela, it has a tumultuous history to draw on.
The company was one of the first Western oil firms to sign multibillion-dollar deals in Venezuela. But its foray backfired in 2007, when it refused to bow to Hugo Chávez's nationalization, and it has by far the most battle scars of its peers. ConocoPhillips is the country's largest nonsovereign creditor and has been fighting tooth and nail to recoup the roughly $12 billion it is still owed.
"We've been on the other end of that despot regime a long time," Chief Executive Ryan Lance said earlier this month at a White House meeting with Trump.
Now, the despot regime has been decapitated, but ConocoPhillips isn't jumping up and down. Trump at the meeting poured cold water on expectations that he would help the company get its money back, saying, "We're not gonna look at what people lost in the past."
And although the prospect of tapping into Venezuela's vast riches might be alluring, people close to ConocoPhillips note it has an abundant backlog of safe, lucrative oil fields to drill -- from West Texas to Alaska. The company has also invested billions of dollars in projects to liquefy and ship natural gas on the Gulf Coast and in Qatar.
For ConocoPhillips, "the bar's likely higher" than for some of its peers, said Don Wallette, a former chief financial officer at the company who retired in 2020. "Their main interest is probably recovering what they are owed."
ConocoPhillips said it continues to monitor developments in Venezuela and their potential implications for global energy supply and stability. "We look forward to working with the Trump administration on energy policies that promote stability and benefit both the Venezuelan and American people," it said in a statement after the White House meeting.
The driller was one of several multinational oil companies that rushed back into Venezuela in the mid-1990s, 20 years after nationalization boxed them out of the country.
Ramshaw, a company veteran with postings in Dubai, Norway and Scotland, became president of Conoco Venezuela in 1999 -- the same year Chávez took office. One of his responsibilities was to oversee Petrozuata, a $2.4 billion project jointly owned by Conoco and state-run company Petróleos de Venezuela, or PdVSA.
Wells pumped viscous, tar-like oil from fields in the Orinoco Belt, a 54,000-square-mile region that holds most of the country's gargantuan crude reserves. The oil was then upgraded so it could be digested by refineries. The joint venture was designed to last until 2036.
"Conoco was seeking legacy projects," said Ramshaw. "Projects that had a 35-40 year life and would keep giving a steady earning stream over that period."
In time, the company gained ownership in an offshore oil venture, and, after its 2002 merger with Phillips Petroleum, it added another heavy oil project to its Venezuela properties. The combined entity, ConocoPhillips, employed more than 500 direct employees and indirectly several thousand more in the country through its partnerships and planned to pump there for decades.
But Chávez's aggressive brand of socialism clouded that prospect. Although Ramshaw had cordial conversations with the charismatic leader about Conoco's ventures, his government believed the country's crude had been wrongly given away. It put up hurdles for some of the company's projects, including plans to expand Petrozuata.
Despite the rising political tensions, Ramshaw enjoyed his expat life. Most weekends, he would walk from his apartment building in the north of Caracas to the forested mountains of El Ávila National Park, which towers over the capital.
That serenity was shattered on that evening in 2002. A man brandishing a gun slid into the back seat of Ramshaw and his wife's chauffeured car and directed them to a location on the outskirts of the airport. From there, an accomplice drove them roughly 30 miles to yet another location.
Ramshaw's wife was put in a different car and her head covered with a blanket. Now, Ramshaw was ordered to drive one of the kidnappers to his gated community. His wife's life depended on him, he was told. So, the executive found himself smuggling a man in his car past building security and into his apartment, where he collected cash and jewelry -- and five cases of whiskey left from a party. Then, he traded the bounty for his wife.
Although so-called express kidnapping was common at the time, the episode, which hasn't been previously reported, rattled the company. "Conoco went into a bit of panic mode," said Ramshaw. For the remainder of his time in Venezuela, he had a bodyguard by his side. After the merger with Phillips later that year, Ramshaw moved to the U.K. to oversee the company's operations there. He left ConocoPhillips in 2003.
The company's Venezuelan ambitions collapsed just a few years after Ramshaw's departure. In 2007, Chávez issued a plan to nationalize foreign-run oil projects. After months of talk, the producer decided to leave rather than agree to take below-market compensation and a minority stake in its three oil projects.
Jubilant workers in hard hats hung the flags of Venezuela and PdVSA at Orinoco oil fields. Overnight, ConocoPhillips lost about 130,000 barrels of oil production and assets that analysts estimated to be worth more than $10 billion.
After its abrupt exit, ConocoPhillips went to court and won arbitration awards against Venezuela and PdVSA that amount to about $12 billion today. But both have kept defaulting on the claims, and the producer so far has collected only $793 million.
To recoup some of the cash, it has had to get creative. In 2018, it seized barrels of crude stored at facilities on the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curaçao, Bonaire and Sint Eustatius, according to a person familiar with the matter. PdVSA for years used the paradisiacal islands as a logistical and refining network. The sale of the crude netted ConocoPhillips $288 million.
The company has targeted other jurisdictions as part of a continuing, worldwide campaign to seize assets, the person said. ConocoPhillips also stands to collect $1.4 billion from the forced sale of Citgo, a U.S.-based refiner owned by PdVSA.
As the company weighs the potential for future business activities or investments in Venezuela, it is doing so while considering its claims, another person close to ConocoPhillips said. If the U.S. oil-and-gas industry were to heed Trump's call and reinvigorate crude production in the country, it could help the company's collection efforts as cash would flow into Venezuela's coffers.
Lance suggested at the White House meeting that the U.S. Export-Import Bank could provide some of the financing needed to restore Venezuela's energy infrastructure. "Encourage you to continue to think bigger and even bolder," the CEO told Trump.
Ramshaw, who is 76 years old, has been watching the events unfold from the countryside near Aberdeen, Scotland. After the U.S. captured strongman Nicolás Maduro, Ramshaw shared some advice with his son, who works for an American oil company, in case he was ever offered an "amazing opportunity" to move to Venezuela.
"Think very hard before you say anything. And then think again," he said.
Write to Benoît Morenne at benoit.morenne@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 19, 2026 05:30 ET (10:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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