Venezuela News — JPMorgan And Jefferies Are Heading To Caracas

Wall Street stopped whispering about Venezuela this week and started flying in. Lionheart Capital is lining up $2.25 billion for upstream oil acquisitions; Jefferies executives just left Caracas and JPMorgan is staffing its own trip. Venezuela hired Hogan Lovells and Centerview Partners to formally open a $150 billion sovereign debt restructuring, and Treasury set a June 19 effective date for the long-delayed General License 5W. The Washington Post Editorial Board, however, used the week to remind everyone that none of this rests on a credible path to free and fair elections.

Energy Sector

Lionheart Capital lines up $2.25 billion for Venezuelan oil acquisitions through a SPAC. A Nasdaq-listed SPAC controlled by Lionheart Capital is in talks to buy oil fields in Venezuela for between $150 million and $400 million, with Wall Street brokerage Clear Street agreeing to provide $1.5 billion in financing for the acquisitions and the capex to rehabilitate the assets. The rest comes from Lionheart’s own funds plus bank financing. Total deployable capital approaches $2.25 billion, the most aggressive single-vehicle Venezuela bet to surface since the corridor reopened. The deals are not final and still require regulatory approval from both Caracas and Washington. Lionheart and Latam Energy Partners formed their Venezuela JV in April; this is the financing announcement. Bloomberg

Big Oil quietly changes its mind on Venezuela. The oil majors have moved from calling Venezuela "uninvestable" to actively negotiating, according to Bloomberg. Chevron is expanding inside Petroindependencia with rights now extending to Ayacucho 8 field at Petropiar JV. Shell has signed preliminary agreements covering the Carito and Pirital fields in Monagas North and is in advanced talks on three additional Mariscal Sucre fields (Río Caribe, Patao, Mejillones) alongside Dragon offshore platform. BP signed a formal Cocuina-Manakin development pact with PDVSA. Repsol and Eni are at the negotiating table. Exxon, alone among them, remains publicly skeptical. Bloomberg

BP and Shell bet on Venezuelan gas to help meet Europe’s energy needs. Spanish-language coverage this week characterized BP and Shell’s offshore gas push as a lifeline for European LNG buyers. Shell’s strategy routes Venezuelan gas via pipeline to its Atlantic LNG facility in Trinidad for liquefaction and onward sale into the Atlantic Basin, with first Dragon gas expected by 2027 and a possible final investment decision by year-end 2026. The combined Mariscal Sucre plus Loran resource base approaches 20 trillion cubic feet. BP’s Cocuina-Manakin field is estimated at roughly 1 trillion cubic feet. Europe is the structural buyer behind both projects. TDJ News

Venezuela’s National Assembly opens electricity to private capital, ending CORPOELEC’s two-decade monopoly. Venezuela’s National Assembly gave initial approval to a reform that opens the power sector to private operators through 25-year concessions, formally ending the state monopoly held by Corpoelec for more than 15 years. The bill allows private companies, mixed enterprises, and minority-state firms to participate across the full generation, transmission, and distribution chain. It also overhauls tariffs to reflect “real costs” and ends long-standing subsidies. Second debate and final ratification are expected within days. After two decades of rolling blackouts, opening the grid is the largest structural reform yet under acting president Delcy Rodríguez. Bloomberg

Deal Flow

JPMorgan and Jefferies book Caracas trips as Wall Street rushes the corridor. JPMorgan Chase and Jefferies Financial Group are organizing client trips to Caracas to assess Venezuela’s debt restructuring and the broader investment opening, according to people familiar with the matter. Jefferies executives, all cleared by the bank’s compliance department, traveled this week and are weighing a return visit. JPMorgan is working to organize its own delegation, possibly with clients. These are among the first known visits by major U.S. banks since the corridor reopened, and they must still navigate stringent internal approval processes and an evolving sanctions regime. Bloomberg

Silicon Valley founders set up shop in Caracas hotels. The Washington Post flagged: Silicon Valley tech founders are now physically based out of the hotels of Caracas, scouting investment opportunities while American Airlines runs two daily flights between Miami and Caracas. The presence is small but unusual, and it sits inside a country where ordinary citizens still report no material improvement in living conditions. Worth watching for the tech-corridor angle, which has so far been overshadowed by oil and bonds. The Washington Post

Economy

Venezuela hires Hogan Lovells and Centerview Partners to anchor a $150 billion debt restructuring. Venezuela formally retained Hogan Lovells US LLP as legal counsel for its sovereign debt restructuring, signing a $100,000-per-month engagement to represent the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Washington embassy on debt restructuring options, proposals, and supporting materials. Centerview Partners is on as financial adviser. Venezuela’s defaulted obligations total an estimated $150 billion to $170 billion, more than 200 percent of GDP. The government is expected to present its macroeconomic framework and a public debt sustainability analysis to the international financial community in June 2026, setting up one of the largest sovereign restructurings since the Greek crisis. Bloomberg

Monthly inflation falls to 6.3 percent in May, the lowest reading in 19 months. Venezuela's May monthly inflation registered 6.3 percent, down from 10.6 percent in April and the lowest single-month figure since October 2024, according to Bloomberg. Cumulative inflation for the first five months of 2026 sits at roughly 102 percent, and the IMF projects 387.4 percent for the full year. The deceleration is supported by heavy central bank dollar sales rather than structural disinflation. The parallel-rate gap persists, with the official BCV rate near 563 bolívars per dollar versus Monitor Dólar near 760, roughly a 35 percent spread. Bloomberg

Regulatory

OFAC's General License 5W ends a seven-year ban on U.S. trading in Venezuelan oil debt, effective June 19. The General License issued on May 4, 2026 authorizing certain transactions related to the Petróleos de Venezuela 2020 8.5 percent bond becomes effective on June 19, 2026. Between October 24, 2019 and that date there has been no authorization in effect that licenses against subsection 1(a)(iii) of E.O. 13835, the provision that has frozen bondholder action on this instrument for nearly seven years. After June 19, U.S. persons may engage in the activities scoped by GL 5W without applying for a specific license. Compliance teams holding or advising on this paper should have their workflows reset by mid-month. OFAC

Politics

Delcy Rodríguez lands in New Delhi for a five-day energy and trade visit. Acting president Delcy Rodríguez arrived in India on June 3 for a five-day visit, meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 4 to discuss transportation, health, energy complementarity, agriculture, science and technology. Banca y Negocios reported parallel negotiations with private Indian companies on agricultural alliances. India has long been the second-largest buyer of Venezuelan crude after the United States (currently about 26 percent of post-January exports), and Indian PSUs have historical equity in Venezuelan energy assets. The trip signals Caracas is not putting all its diplomatic weight on Washington. Eastern Herald

Opinion

Washington Post Editorial Board: investor confidence requires a credible election path. The Post’s Editorial Board argued that, while Venezuela has been a more cooperative partner since the U.S. arrested Maduro and Treasury issued the broad General License 49 authorizing nearly any foreign entity to invest in oil and gas, American businesses will not commit to long-term capital until Caracas outlines a credible path to free and fair elections. The piece is the clearest mainstream editorial pushback yet on the “Venezuela is open for business” narrative and is being read closely inside Treasury and OFAC. The Washington Post

Caracas Chronicles: Wall Street and China face the same structural obstacle Andrés R. Bermúdez García argued that the security apparatus, not the courts or the central bank, is the single biggest constraint on any reconstruction project, and that Wall Street and Chinese SOEs are now learning what Venezuelan businesses have long known about who actually controls operating decisions. A useful counterweight to the investor euphoria of the same week. Caracas Chronicles