Trump Ally Harold Hamm Strikes Venezuela Oil Deal

Mr. Hamm’s company, Continental Resources, has signed a preliminary deal with Venezuela’s state-owned oil company to develop and produce oil.

· Continental Resources, led by Trump ally Harold Hamm, has signed a preliminary agreement with Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA to develop an oil-producing area in the country.

· The deal covers 126,000 acres in the Ayacucho 2 Block of Venezuela’s oil-rich Orinoco Belt.

· The agreement is separate from the Venezuela oil arrangement announced by the Trump administration last month.

· Continental would enter Venezuela for the first time if a final contract is reached. The company has not yet disclosed its planned investment or expected production.

· Continental CEO Doug Lawler said operations could potentially begin about six months after a final contract, although the production timeline remains uncertain because the site requires new infrastructure and drilling.

· The project is expected to require significant capital investment, including wells and infrastructure, with the precise development program dependent on seismic, technical and initial drilling data.

· Venezuela’s oil industry has suffered from underinvestment, mismanagement, corruption and U.S. sanctions, while much of its crude is particularly heavy and technically more challenging to produce and process.

· Continental says it has some experience with heavy oil in the U.S. and does not view Venezuela’s crude as an insurmountable technical challenge.

· The announcement follows Chevron’s plan to more than double its Venezuelan production over the next five years, indicating growing interest from U.S. oil companies in Venezuela.

· U.S. oil producers are increasingly looking overseas as they face concerns about the availability of attractive drilling opportunities in the domestic market.

· Continental has previously expanded internationally through oil-production deals in Turkey and Argentina.

· Harold Hamm has been a close energy adviser and financial supporter of President Trump, while Trump has promoted greater U.S. oil investment in Venezuela.

· U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright described the deal as a potential milestone toward making the Western Hemisphere a center of the global energy system.

[ABS News Service/17.09.2026]

Harold Hamm, an oil executive who is close to President Trump, on Wednesday announced plans to drill for oil in Venezuela, joining a growing number of American oil producers planning to do business in the South American country.

Mr. Hamm’s company, Continental Resources, signed a preliminary deal with Venezuela’s national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, to develop and operate a 126,000-acre region in the country’s oil-rich Orinoco Belt, known as the Ayacucho 2 Block.

The agreement, which is not part of the deal that the Trump administration announced last month, was revealed at a meeting of energy ministers from the Group of 20 nations hosted by the Trump administration in Houston. It comes after Chevron, a much bigger U.S. oil company that is already operating in Venezuela, said it would more than double its production in the country over the next five years.

Mr. Trump has been pushing American oil companies to invest in Venezuela since U.S. forces captured the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January.

Mr. Hamm, whose company is based in Oklahoma City, made his fortune drilling domestically. He has been a major player in the shale fracking boom that made the United States the world’s biggest oil and gas producer.

But many of those who made their fortunes in the U.S. oil industry are now looking abroad as they become more concerned about running out of attractive drilling opportunities at home. Continental in recent years struck deals to produce oil in Turkey and Argentina.

If Mr. Hamm’s preliminary deal moves ahead, it would be Continental’s first foray into Venezuela. The country has a lot of oil but its industry has been eroded by years of mismanagement, underinvestment, corruption and U.S. sanctions. Much of Venezuela’s oil is so heavy that it has the consistency of asphalt. Few American oil producers have much experience handling such heavy oil.

“This is a huge resource in Venezuela,” Mr. Hamm said on Wednesday at the G-20 meeting. “We know this is a great opportunity.”

Continental did not say how much money it would invest or how much oil it ultimately aimed to produce. The company still needs to negotiate a final contract with Venezuela.

Doug Lawler, the chief executive of Continental, said that operations could begin six months after a contract was signed, though he added that the timeline for production was highly uncertain because the company was developing a new site.

“We know it’s going to be a significant amount of capital that will have to be deployed into wells and new infrastructure,” Mr. Lawler told reporters in Houston. “It’s difficult at this point in time without the seismic data, the technical data, some of the initial drilling data to determine what that exact development program will look like.”

While Continental does not have extensive experience working with the type of heavy oil found in Venezuela, Mr. Lawler said the company had worked on some limited heavy oil projects in the United States. “We don’t consider it to be a technical challenge that we couldn’t pursue completely on our own,” he said.

Some energy experts have been doubtful that producers will be able to easily or quickly unlock Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. But Mr. Hamm pointed out that Continental had helped to pioneer the use of fracking techniques to extract oil from shale rock, something many industry experts had also been skeptical of.

“Our team is used to challenges,” Mr. Hamm said. “We like that. We rise to the occasion and perhaps do the impossible sometimes.”

Mr. Hamm also said that he was confident that Venezuela would uphold any oil agreements, even if there was a change in government. “I believe that in the future they’ll recognize that it’s in their best interest,” he said.

Mr. Hamm has been a trusted adviser on energy issues to Mr. Trump and contributed more than $2 million to the president’s political campaigns. Since returning to power, the president has rolled back environmental regulations and expanded tax breaks for oil companies — policies that Mr. Hamm has lobbied for and that have benefited his business.

Mr. Hamm has also used his influence with Mr. Trump to position his allies for top jobs in the administration. Two of those people — Mr. Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, and interior secretary, Doug Burgum — attended the event and helped announce Continental’s Venezuela deal on Wednesday, as did several senior Venezuelan officials.

“It’s a milestone deal in making the Western Hemisphere the center of the global energy system,” Mr. Wright said.