Big Oil has often employed the “hang around” playbook: secure legal rights to a giant resource — and then, eventually, figure out how to produce it profitably. But few companies have taken it to the extremes of Chevron. For two decades, Chevron stayed in Venezuela while all its major peers quit after former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez nationalized foreign assets atop the world’s largest oil reserves in the mid-2000s.
The Houston-based company endured U.S. sanctions, accounting write-offs, arrests of its employees and accusations of collusion with a regime rife with corruption and human rights abuses. The payoff came on Wednesday: a landmark deal that will provide Chevron with billions of barrels of reserves, enough to last into the 2040s — and perhaps beyond.
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