(WO) – North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) said its in-country rig fleet in Venezuela will reach 41 in November, part of the 60-rig buildout the company announced earlier this month. NABEP also said its production reached 223,509 boed on Oct. 19, up from about 200,000 in August.
NABEP has nine drilling rigs in Venezuela. Three are active in the Junín 10 block of the Orinoco Belt, three more will start there soon and three are being refurbished or moved into position. Four more drilling rigs, including H&P and NOV models from U.S. manufacturers, are being shipped from Houston, Brazil and Colombia. The company also has 20 workover rigs in the country, bringing idle and underperforming wells back online. Three are in Lake Maracaibo, 12 are in the Lagunillas and Bachaquero fields and five are in the Orinoco Belt. Fifteen more workover rigs are being refurbished in Houston for western Venezuela. NABEP said all 35 workover rigs are being recertified to Category 4, the most thorough level of rig inspection, before entering service.
“We are paying for every one of these rigs with the oil we produce. It’s the same reinvestment strategy we used to successfully grow production tenfold in two years,” said NABEP CEO Alejandro Betancourt. “We’re concurrently planning and investing in shovel-ready brown fields to the most challenging green fields, and no company is better suited for the job at hand than one born right here at home, powered by Venezuelan workers.”
This is NABEP’s second fleet update. In October, the company added 11 550-hp workover rigs and two 1,500-hp drilling rigs. The expansion follows NABEP’s August agreement with the U.S. Departments of State and War to expand Venezuelan oil production. The first 1 million bbl of oil under that agreement arrived in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Oct. 27, days after U.S. State Department officials toured NABEP’s Venezuelan operations. Other U.S. contractors are also returning to the country: Nabors Industries recently signed a multiyear contract to deploy a rig in Venezuela in early 2027.
NABEP said it has grown production from about 18,000 bpd to more than 200,000 bpd in two years through roughly $1 billion in company-funded investment, and that it continues to reinvest hundreds of millions of dollars each month. The company, which employs 5,000 people and supports 10,000 contract workers in Venezuela, said it controls the rights to commercialize more than 65 Bbbl of P1 reserves in the country. NABEP plans to invest nearly $100 billion in production capacity and infrastructure, and its stated near-term goal is more than 1 MMbpd.
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