As Oil Companies Circle the New Venezuela, Cleary Gottlieb Flags Risks, Rewards

Cleary Gottlieb partners Richard Cooper and Yulia Solomakhina spoke with BNamericas on Venezuela’s new oil and gas contract regime.

Rich and Yulia discuss how the new contrato de participación productiva (CPP) model improves on the prior mandatory joint ventures with PDVSA by giving investors operational control, while flagging investors’ key concern: the broad discretion the government retains over commercialization terms, pricing, and the “economic equilibrium” protections meant to shield projects from future tax changes. The conversation also covers U.S. licensing requirements under OFAC’s extraterritorial reach and why, despite the risks, frontier-market investors remain drawn to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

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