EL TIGRE: The beating heart of Venezuela’s oil revival doesn’t lie in the shiny bubble of its capital Caracas, but rather more than a six-hour drive south-east, in a place called El Tigre.
Private jets now routinely touch down in the modest airport on the outskirts of this town.
Venezuelans are returning after years abroad to take up jobs at the growing number of service and supply companies that are expanding or setting up shop. Modern office buildings have little space left to lease, while rents for furnished townhouses have jumped 33% since the start of the year.
“In October, we more than doubled the volume of equipment shipped and tripled the number of companies served compared with February,” said Greg Díaz, head of Humble, Texas-based shipping firm Frontier Forwarders Inc.
“We’ve now added a second vessel to handle new bookings.”
The burst of activity in this town on the frontier of the Orinoco Belt – a vast deposit of tar-like oil – is a fragile proxy for Venezuela’s vaunted comeback, characterised by rising exuberance to restart drilling and rehabilitate wells after years of underinvestment, sanctions and an exodus of foreign producers.
El Tigre’s proximity to existing operations and concentration of oil-service companies have made it an early staging ground.
The frenzy is unfolding before companies have pumped out a single new barrel of oil.
Companies are leasing offices and storage yards, importing equipment, hiring staff and inspecting fields as they prepare for operations that in many cases are still months away. The lights still go out for long stretches.
The tentative reawakening of El Tigre comes after US forces captured Nicolas Maduro in January, setting up the rise of acting President Delcy Rodríguez, whose US-backed government has moved quickly to court foreign capital.
Venezuela overhauled its oil law early this year, easing taxes and royalties and giving private companies more room to operate in areas long dominated by state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA).
Some began betting on an opening long before Maduro’s ouster.
Turkish power plant operator Çan2 Termik AS invested in Venezuelan contractor Denarius Pumping Services CA in El Tigre in 2024.
In September, Florida-based affiliate Denarius Holding Group Inc – via Venezuela unit Minerosol Group CA – signed a contract with PDVSA to rehabilitate and drill a nearby field as part of a US$400mil investment plan.
“We are used to working in frontier markets,” said Zehra Zeynep Dereli, vice-president of Denarius Holding Group.
“We’ve seen the tremendous growth that can come from the right investments and regulations, and we thought we could replicate that in Venezuela.”
Oil has shaped El Tigre since the 1930s, when Standard Oil discovered the Orinoco Belt’s signature heavy crude and the settlement was transformed into a bustling industry hub.
Today the city of around 300,000 residents sits among ageing wells, pipelines and storage facilities, with crude produced around El Tigre transported north to PDVSA’s processing and export facilities on the Caribbean coast.
El Tigre – Spanish for “the tiger” – is dotted with statues of the big cat, including a famously ungainly roadside sculpture that became a national meme and later a beloved selfie stop.
The tiger now symbolises an industry that’s again poised to pounce.
Oil companies that signed deals with PDVSA in recent months have up to 120 days to inspect fields and facilities, assess remaining reserves and environmental damage, and prepare production plans for approval.
They’re currently moving in equipment, workers and money in anticipation of what comes next.
Cargo is arriving from across the United States, including Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Louisiana.
Since July, shipments have expanded beyond oilfield machinery to include portable clinics, ambulances and fire trucks destined for fields around El Tigre, Diaz said.
The equipment enters Venezuela through several ports, including Guanta, less than three hours north by road, before moving inland.
New employees are arriving too, including Venezuelans recruited from the sprawling diaspora.
Colombia’s GeoPark Ltd, Brazil’s Alvorada Oil & Gas and US oil services company Weatherford International Plc are among those bringing in staff.
Weatherford alone has expanded its specialised Venezuela workforce tenfold.
Alvorada has 250 employees in Venezuela and runs its Orinoco operations from El Tigre, where it also has an equipment manufacturing facility.
The company plans to invest US$70mil in its current operations in 2027, “alongside parallel projects in equipment manufacturing, power generation and social initiatives”, said Brazilian founder Paulo Buzanelli, who is executive chairman of Texas-based Alvorada Holdings USA Corp, through which the company is channelling its Venezuela investment.
India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp, the international arm of state-owned ONGC Videsh Ltd, recently dispatched a team to inspect oil fields and review assets after receiving US approval to resume operations. Some companies expect to take full control of operations and begin work by year-end.
The city’s top hotels are often fully booked and restaurants that once sat largely empty have had to bring in additional staff and services to cope with demand.
Room occupancy at the Eurobuilding El Tigre jumped to 87% in October from 35% a year earlier, according to Eduardo Zarikian, chief executive officer of Eurobuilding Hotels Group.
Acting president Rodríguez commented about bookings during last Thursday’s address, saying that she had “just finished meeting with an American investor, and he told me: ‘We have nowhere to stay in El Tigre – everything is fully booked’.”
Private-jet traffic has also picked up at the airport outside El Tigre.
Senior executives have flown in from incumbent companies such as Chevron Corp and North American Blue Energy Partners Inc as well as from newcomers like Fred Ehrsam’s Primavera Infinita. — Bloomberg
