Venezuela sits in the Houston G20 energy room without a G20 seat
Hydrocarbons Minister Paula Henao and PDVSA vice president Jovanny Martínez are in Texas at the Trump administration’s invitation. They are barred from closed ministerial sessions but booked for bilateral and industry meetings. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called the visit a sign that oil’s centre of gravity is moving.
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Venezuela is not a member of the Group of 20. Its hydrocarbons minister, Paula Henao, and Jovanny Martínez, executive vice president of Petróleos de Venezuela, arrived in Houston anyway this week for the G20 energy ministerial. A White House official said they came at the invitation of the Trump administration. They will not sit in the closed-door ministerial sessions. They are booked for bilateral meetings, side events and industry discussions.
The US, as G20 president this year, can invite guests. It has used that power before. The Venezuelan presence is still a political marker. Washington spent years treating Caracas as a sanctions target. It now wants barrels. The war around Iran and the damage to Saudi export routes have pushed that search into the open. Venezuela holds some of the world’s largest proven reserves. Output has been a fraction of that potential for a decade.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Fox News that the invitation reflects a shift of oil’s geopolitical centre out of the Middle East and toward the Western Hemisphere. That is a speech line, not a shipping schedule. What is concrete is the guest list and the venue. Houston is where US operators, service companies and traders keep their books. A Venezuelan delegation in those rooms can talk liftings, joint ventures and payment channels without waiting for a full diplomatic reset.
Trump has announced a deal that, on his account, gives the United States a 35 percent equity position in North American Blue Energy Partners and a right to buy 20 percent of that vehicle’s crude at cost from Venezuelan fields. The fields in that telling are said to hold about 65 billion barrels of proven reserves. Those numbers have not been independently audited in the same breath as the announcement. They sit in the same week as Henao’s flight to Texas. That is the sequence the market has, not a finished concession map.
PDVSA still carries sanctions risk, unpaid suppliers and a wrecked upgrader system. Any serious lift in exports needs diluent, spare parts and a buyer who can pay. US companies have the kit. They also have lawyers. The Houston meetings are where those two facts meet. Henao’s brief is to show that Caracas can sit at an energy table without being a member of the club that owns the table.
Other G20 energy ministers are in town to talk security of supply after Hormuz and the Red Sea. Adding Venezuela to the corridor conversations lets Washington argue that new Western Hemisphere barrels can offset lost Gulf volumes. It also hands Caracas visibility it has not had at this rank of forum in years. The closed sessions will still be held without Venezuelan votes. The hallway meetings may matter more. Those are where offtake, equity and political cover get sketched before anyone writes a treaty.
Watch who Henao and Martínez sit with, and whether any US major or trader puts a term sheet on paper before the ministers fly home. The invitation is the story today. A signed lifting contract would be the story that makes the invitation look cheap or expensive.
