Why are oil companies in Venezuela now required to generate their own power?

Oil companies are required to self-supply power because Venezuela’s national electricity grid is severely unreliable—suffering frequent blackouts due to decades of underinvestment, corruption, and poor maintenance—causing electric motors at oil wells to shut down during grid frequency fluctuations, which directly disrupts production and leads to significant output losses.

What real-world impact did recent power failures have on Chevron's operations in Venezuela?

On April 23, electricity failures affected Chevron’s 827 wells in the Orinoco Belt, causing a measurable decrease in production; over 95% of those wells depend on the national grid, while fewer than 5% use backup generators, making them highly vulnerable to daily outages that force manual or system-based well restarts and result in lost time and output.

Venezuela Mandates Oil Firms to Self-Supply Power for Projects

Jun 2, 2026

Venezuela has introduced new regulations requiring oil and gas companies to generate their own power due to frequent grid blackouts. This measure aims to protect operations like Chevron's Orinoco Belt wells from production losses caused by electricity failures.

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