CARACAS, Venezuela — Interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez has more than tripled the country’s oil exports since the capture of former dictator Nicolas Maduro, surging from less than 400,000 barrels per day in January to over 1.25 million bpd as of May, while aggressively courting new trade partners in India and Turkey to replace China as Caracas’s dominant customer.
Rodríguez landed in India on June 3 for a four-day visit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cabinet ministers, and business conglomerates aimed at expanding crude oil exports. The results have been rapid: Venezuela went from exporting zero barrels per day to India in January to 427,000 bpd in May. The Trump administration has backed the effort as part of a broader strategy to wean Delhi off Russian oil. Of the approximately 1.25 million barrels Venezuela now exports daily, around one million goes to the United States and India, with nearly all the remainder going to Israel, Italy, and the Netherlands.
From India, Rodríguez flew to Istanbul to meet with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan. Turkey and Venezuela had cooperated under Maduro, who ramped up support for Erdogan after the failed 2016 coup attempt, signing energy and gold deals that ran counter to Washington’s sanctions regime. With many of those sanctions now lifted, Rodríguez secured a tacit agreement to raise bilateral trade from $448 million to $3 billion.
The diplomatic push marks a dramatic reorientation away from China, which had been Venezuela’s top oil customer. In November 2025, before the U.S. launched Operation Southern Spear — a total blockade of Venezuelan oil that culminated in the raid capturing Maduro on January 3 — Venezuela exported 952,000 bpd total, with 778,000 bpd going to China. Venezuelan crude accounted for 4 percent of China’s total imports, refined mostly by independent “teapot” refiners in Shandong. That trade has now collapsed.
The export recovery has been fueled by sanctions relief, a new oil law Venezuela passed in January allowing foreign companies to operate and sell the country’s oil, and American private investment. Chevron announced an agreement to expand heavy oil production in its joint venture with Venezuela’s state-run oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). The venture, named Petroindependencia, operates in the Orinoco Oil Belt and seeks to increase output by roughly 50 percent over the next two years. Chevron was already producing 260,000 bpd before the new deal.
Shell is also moving toward a deal with PDVSA to develop the Carito and Pirital oil fields in eastern Venezuela. American oilfield firm SLB signed a long-term deal with PDVSA to help modernize the country’s archaic oil and gas sector. Oilfield service companies have begun reactivating equipment as new contracts require increased production, with at least nine rigs of 500–1,500 horsepower reportedly taken out of storage for assembly or repair and another five rigs under assessment.
Venezuela’s current output remains far below its peak of 3.45 million bpd in 1997, a decline driven by decades of corruption and mismanagement under the Maduro regime. Rodríguez, who served as Maduro’s foreign minister and vice president, built many of the relationships with Russia and China that Washington pressured Caracas to abandon. Her pivot to middle powers like India and Turkey — with American backing — represents the clearest signal yet that the post-Maduro government is trading its old authoritarian partnerships for Western-aligned commerce, with Chevron’s expanded Orinoco production expected to come online over the next two years.