NABEP Rig Fleet to Reach 41 as Output Tops 223,000 boe/d

North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) said on October 31, 2026, that its in-country rig fleet in Venezuela will reach 41 of the 60 rigs it purchased earlier in the month, and that its production reached 223,509 barrels of oil equivalent per day on October 19, up from about 200,000 in August.

The update is the company’s second on its fleet in October, following the addition of 11 550-horsepower workover rigs and two 1,500-horsepower drilling rigs earlier in the month.

Drilling and Workover Fleet

NABEP said it has nine drilling rigs in Venezuela, units that bore new wells. Three are active in the Junín 10 block of the Orinoco Belt, three more will start there soon, and three are being refurbished or moved into position. Four additional drilling rigs are being shipped from Houston, Brazil and Colombia. The fleet includes H&P and NOV models from U.S. manufacturers. According to the company, the drilling rigs will open new production from its heavy oil reserves.

The company said it also has 20 workover rigs in Venezuela, which repair existing wells and bring idle or underperforming wells back into production. Three of them are in Lake Maracaibo, 12 are in the Lagunillas and Bachaquero fields, and five are in the Orinoco Belt. Fifteen more are being refurbished in Houston for deployment in western Venezuela. All 35 are being recertified to Category 4, which the announcement described as the most thorough level of rig inspection, before entering service.

In an October 13, 2026 announcement, NABEP said it had purchased 60 rigs, 30 steam boilers and 70 pieces of heavy machinery, a package it said gave it the largest heavy-equipment fleet in the country. That release disclosed the deployment of 11 new 550-horsepower workover rigs and the arrival of two new 1,500-horsepower drilling rigs on October 7, with more equipment expected to arrive soon. The company said the workover rigs marked the first time in more than 15 years that new mobile repair-and-maintenance systems would operate in Venezuelan oil fields.

“We are paying for every one of these rigs with the oil we produce. It’s the same reinvestment strategy we used to successfully grow production tenfold in two years,” NABEP CEO Alejandro Betancourt said in the company’s October 31 announcement.

NABEP said it has scaled production from approximately 18,000 barrels per day to more than 200,000 in two years through roughly $1 billion in company-funded investment, and that hundreds of millions of dollars more are being reinvested every month. The company said it employs 5,000 people and supports 10,000 contract employees in Venezuela.

U.S. Agreement and First Crude Cargo

The fleet buildout follows the August 2026 agreement between NABEP and the U.S. Departments of State and War to significantly expand oil production in Venezuela. Under terms the company announced on September 1, 2026, NABEP retains operating control of the business while the U.S. government holds rights to a 35% stake in the company and preferential access to 20% of its production at cost. The release, datelined August 31, 2026, said President Donald J. Trump announced the agreement on Truth Social, and it carried a statement posted to X by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said the deal would support thousands of high-paying jobs and drive the reconstruction of Venezuela’s economy.

The September announcement said the program will generate more than $209 billion in tax revenue for the Venezuelan state. It said that following the transactions, NABEP controls the rights to commercialize more than 65 billion barrels of P1 reserves in Venezuela, and it described the company as the country’s second-largest oil producer.

On October 27, 2026, two tankers carrying the first 1 million barrels of Venezuelan crude produced by NABEP under the agreement arrived in Corpus Christi, Texas. NABEP said it delivered the first million barrels at no cost to the U.S. taxpayer to recognize what it called the historic nature of the agreement with its new anchor buyer. The company said Trump and Rubio visited the Port of Corpus Christi to see one of the newly arrived tankers. That announcement described the deal as granting the U.S. government the right to purchase 20% of NABEP’s production at cost, with no markup, in addition to a 35% equity stake in NABEP’s parent company.

“This cargo reached Texas in just over a week. Crude from the Middle East can take more than a month,” Betancourt said in the October 27 announcement.

NABEP said it plans to invest nearly $100 billion to increase production capacity and improve oil-and-gas infrastructure, and that it is rapidly expanding its operations in Lake Maracaibo and the Orinoco Belt with a near-term goal of increasing production to more than 1 million barrels of oil per day.