American oil supermajor. Chevron was the only American major which stayed in Venezuela after Nicolás Maduro's predecessor nationalised the oil industry in 2007. Its production costs in the Americas outside the United States stood at $14 per barrel according to its latest annual report—half as much again as its global average, and almost certainly pushed up by its Venezuelan operations. Mike Wirth is its chief executive.
In 2025 Chevron completed its $60bn takeover of Hess, a smaller rival with big assets in Guyana. According to Hess's pre-merger filings, its production cost per Guyanese barrel was less than $7. Chevron's 2026 capital budget is $18bn–19bn, of which $7bn is for offshore projects; Guyana is by far the biggest.
Chevron made a net profit of perhaps $13bn in 2025—the worst result since 2020 and down by over 40% from the average in 2021–24, as oversupply pushed down crude prices. Net income for the first quarter of 2026 was $2.2bn, down 37% on the year, dragged down by $2.9bn of hedging losses as oil prices soared with the start of the 2026 Iran war. Chevron is routing more of its production through its own trading arm; it expects to handle over 40% of its crude in-house in the next quarter, double the prior year's share, keeping its Asian refineries over 80% utilised.
Chevron is in pole position among foreign oil companies seeking to profit from Venezuela's reopened oil industry after Maduro's fall. Wirth maintained close contact with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for months. In the first week of January 2026, after a partial lifting of the American blockade, Chevron loaded around 1.7m barrels of Venezuelan crude onto tankers—the most since May 2025. It is also involved in the sale of 50m stockpiled barrels, worth perhaps $2bn, that America is acquiring from Venezuela. Chevron currently produces 240,000 barrels a day jointly with PDVSA and reckons it can boost that by half within two years. Other oil majors remain far more cautious: ExxonMobil's Darren Woods has called Venezuela "uninvestable" under current conditions, and both Exxon and ConocoPhillips remain sour about expropriations under Hugo Chávez.
Youth. It's a wonder that anyone ever outgrows it.