BP will develop the second phase of Venezuela's offshore Loran gasfield alongside a Qatari firm owned by the Al-Khayyat brothers and the overseas investment arm of the UAE's national oil company, marking one of the first major foreign investments in the country since the US ousted Nicolás Maduro in January.
The Al-Khayyat brothers are separately building a resort in Albania with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, while the UAE's oil minister previously pledged Trump a sixfold increase in US energy investment. BP's move follows Shell's licence for Loran's first phase and comes after Trump urged foreign oil companies to invest at least $100bn in rebuilding Venezuela's fossil fuel sector.
BP's chief executive Meg O'Neill, a former ExxonMobil executive newly installed at the helm, called the licence 'an important step forward.' Venezuela's oil output has climbed to 1.2m barrels a day since the US took control of the industry, still a fraction of its late-1990s peak of 3.5m barrels.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.