3 Foreign Energy Giants Set To Develop Venezuela’s Loran Gas Field After BP, XRG, and UCC Ink New Licences
BP, XRG, and UCC receive licences to develop Venezuela’s Loran gas field. Foreign energy companies resume operations after earthquake pause halted licensing.
Venezuela’s Loran gas field licences, granted Thursday in Caracas, mark a resumption of the country’s foreign energy opening after the June 24 earthquakes halted the process — with BP, XRG of the UAE, and UCC of Qatar now joining Shell as licensed operators in the region.
Venezuela formally granted natural gas exploration and production licences on Thursday to three foreign energy companies — BP of the United Kingdom, XRG of the United Arab Emirates, and UCC of Qatar — in a move that signals the continued acceleration of Caracas’s energy-sector liberalisation under sustained pressure from Washington. The licences, announced in Caracas by interim leader Delcy Rodriguez, authorise the three firms to develop the Loran natural gas field, one of Venezuela’s most significant offshore deposits. Organised under the authority of Rodriguez’s transitional administration and aligned with the policy direction set following the January capture of former president Nicolás Maduro, the new agreements extend a pattern of foreign energy deals that had been suspended in the wake of the June 24 earthquakes — a disaster that killed more than 6,300 people and temporarily froze the licensing process. With organisers of the energy-opening framework projecting an expanded role for international operators across both oil and gas sectors, Thursday’s announcement marks the first batch of new licences issued since that pause. Shell had previously received a licence in June to work in a separate area of the same Loran field.
Four Days After The Earthquakes Paused Everything, Caracas Is Already Resuming Deals
With the licensing process only recently unfrozen, Thursday’s ceremony in Caracas carried weight beyond its procedural function. This is not a simple resource deal. It is a geopolitical repositioning, an economic liberalisation, a sanctions-relief mechanism, and a test of Venezuela’s post-Maduro governance capacity — all compressed into a single announcement.
In the weeks and months leading up to the earthquake pause, Venezuela had been moving with unusual speed to attract foreign capital into its energy sector. Multiple agreements with international companies for oil and gas exploration, production, and export had been signed in rapid succession. The resumption on Thursday, with three new licences covering the Loran field, suggests the Rodriguez administration views the licensing momentum as too strategically important to delay further, even as the country continues managing the aftermath of one of its worst recent natural disasters. The licences covering natural gas exploration signal a deliberate expansion beyond oil — into a segment Rodriguez described as a personal policy priority.
From Exploration Rights To Export Agreements, A Broad Programme Of Energy Deals Is Unfolding
The three licences granted Thursday authorise BP, XRG, and UCC to explore for and produce natural gas specifically within the Loran field, a deposit located in Venezuelan waters that the government has been actively parcelling out to international operators. The Loran field is now host to at least four licensed foreign entities, with Shell holding rights to a distinct portion of the field granted in June, and the three new licensees covering additional development zones.
Venezuela’s energy-sector opening encompasses multiple categories of participation: exploration and appraisal activity, production development, export infrastructure, and commercial offtake arrangements. The Loran licences fall primarily within the first two categories, though downstream and export arrangements are expected to follow as field development progresses.
Rodriguez, speaking at Thursday’s announcement, framed natural gas as a distinct pillar of national policy. “I have a special interest in gas to promote national development,” she said, indicating that the gas-licensing programme is being pursued on its own terms — not simply as an extension of the more widely reported oil agreements. According to public statements from the transitional administration, Venezuela’s energy-sector reform, initiated after the US secured Maduro’s capture in January, has been specifically designed to allow both American and non-American foreign companies to access the country’s reserves of oil and natural gas.
Behind The Licensing Acceleration Is An Experiment In ‘Sanctions-For-Access Exchange’
The real story here is not the number of licences issued, but the mechanism driving their issuance. The structural logic underpinning Venezuela’s energy opening is a reciprocal arrangement: in exchange for Caracas granting access to its reserves — the largest proven oil reserves in the world, alongside substantial natural gas deposits — Washington has progressively eased the sanctions that had constrained foreign investment in Venezuela throughout the Maduro era.
The sequence has been deliberate. Following Maduro’s capture in January, interim leader Rodriguez moved to reform Venezuela’s energy law in a manner consistent with the Trump administration’s demands, opening the legal framework so that US companies and allied foreign firms could operate in the country. That legal reform enabled the subsequent wave of agreements. What participants in the new licensing regime are effectively doing involves field development commitments, joint-venture structuring, export planning, regulatory compliance with the reformed Venezuelan energy law, and coordination with US sanctions-relief provisions — a multi-layered set of obligations that go well beyond a standard upstream licence.
The platforms facilitating visibility into these deals span formal government announcements, international energy press, and diplomatic channels in Washington, London, Abu Dhabi, and Doha. For BP, XRG, and UCC, Thursday’s licences represent an early-stage entry point into a market that had been largely closed to foreign capital for years. The strategic ambition of the Rodriguez administration, as reflected in the pace of deal-making, appears to shift Venezuela’s energy sector from a state-controlled monopoly into a mixed, internationally integrated production base capable of attracting sustained foreign capital and technology.
Venezuela’s Verified Reserves Give The Loran Licences A Natural Credibility Base
The choice of Venezuela as a destination for fresh foreign energy investment is itself a strategic decision worth noting. The country’s underlying resource position — holder of the world’s largest proven oil reserves and substantial natural gas deposits — means the Loran licences are being issued against a backdrop of genuine geological scale, not speculative frontier acreage.
Sourcing materials from the Rodriguez administration project a cumulative expansion of foreign operator involvement across multiple fields and resource types, with the official external framing from Caracas describing the energy opening as a systematic national development programme. The distinction matters: the pace and ultimate scale of that expansion remains subject to the ongoing US sanctions-relief framework, Venezuelan legal stability, and the operational realities facing companies working in a country still recovering from a major earthquake.
Public information confirms the energy-opening initiative is jointly driven by the Venezuelan transitional administration under Delcy Rodriguez and shaped by the policy conditions set by the Trump administration in Washington. Shell’s earlier Loran licence, and now the addition of BP, XRG, and UCC, confirm that multiple jurisdictions — the UK, UAE, and Qatar among them — are participating alongside American interests. The precise production timelines, investment commitments, and export volumes associated with Thursday’s licences had not been publicly specified at the time of writing.
Frequently Asked Questions About Venezuela’s Loran Gas Field Licences
Which companies received Venezuela’s new natural gas licences on Thursday? Venezuela granted natural gas exploration and production licences on Thursday, in Caracas, to three foreign companies: BP of the United Kingdom, XRG of the United Arab Emirates, and UCC of Qatar. All three licences cover development activity within the Loran natural gas field.
What is the Loran field and where is it located? The Loran field is a natural gas deposit located in Venezuelan offshore waters. As of Thursday, at least four foreign companies hold licences to operate in distinct portions of the field — Shell, which received its licence in June 2025, and BP, XRG, and UCC, which received their licences on Thursday.
Why did Venezuela pause its energy licensing programme before Thursday’s announcement? Venezuela suspended the granting of new energy licences following the June 24, 2025 earthquakes, which killed more than 6,300 people. Thursday’s announcement marked the resumption of the licensing process after that pause.
What prompted Venezuela to open its energy sector to foreign companies? Venezuela’s energy-sector liberalisation followed the US capture of former president Nicolás Maduro in January 2025. Interim leader Delcy Rodriguez subsequently reformed Venezuela’s energy law under pressure from the Trump administration, enabling foreign companies — both American and non-American — to explore for and produce oil and natural gas in the country.
Has the United States eased sanctions on Venezuela in connection with these energy deals? Yes. The United States has progressively eased sanctions that were in place during the Maduro era, allowing foreign companies to operate in Venezuela’s energy sector. The easing of sanctions is directly linked to Venezuela’s agreement to open its oil and gas reserves to international operators.
What are Venezuela’s natural resource credentials that make these licences significant? Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven reserves of oil and also possesses large deposits of natural gas. This resource base underpins the international interest in licences such as those granted Thursday for the Loran field.
What did interim leader Delcy Rodriguez say about the new gas licences? Speaking at the Thursday announcement in Caracas, Delcy Rodriguez stated: “I have a special interest in gas to promote national development,” signalling that natural gas is being treated as a distinct and prioritised pillar of Venezuela’s energy-sector strategy, separate from the more widely reported oil agreements.
A Licensing Milestone That Reflects Both Resource Scale And Political Realignment
Thursday’s announcement in Caracas adds three more international names — BP, XRG, and UCC — to a growing roster of foreign companies now legally authorised to develop Venezuela’s natural gas resources, with the Loran field emerging as the primary early focus of that activity. The resumption of licences after the earthquake pause, combined with Rodriguez’s explicit emphasis on gas as a national development priority, confirms that the energy-sector opening is being treated by Caracas as a durable policy direction rather than a temporary concession.
For more information on Venezuela’s Loran gas field licences and the country’s broader energy-sector opening, readers may refer to:
- Official Government Source: Venezuelan Ministry of Energy and Petroleum — menpet.gob.ve
- Interim Administration Statements: Office of Delcy Rodriguez, Caracas, Venezuela
- BP Corporate Communications: bp.com/en/global/corporate/news-and-insights.html
- XRG Corporate Information: xrg.ae
- Reuters Energy Desk Coverage: reuters.com/business/energy
Readers seeking further detail on the sanctions-relief framework governing foreign participation in Venezuela’s energy sector may consult official US Treasury Department guidance at ofac.treasury.gov.
