Alejandro Betancourt, an entrepreneur with a checkered history who controls Venezuela’s leading independent oil producer, is helping the US administration identify promising energy assets, assess operational bottlenecks and make industry connections, according to people familiar with his role.

Betancourt is working to facilitate a US strategy to tap smaller American wildcatters as established oil majors have largely balked at investing there. Several preliminary agreements have been reached in recent months with companies including Lionheart Capital and Pacific Coast Energy Co., known as PCEC.

Bloomberg’s reporting on Betancourt is based on interviews with his business associates, government officials and advisers familiar with his work. They requested anonymity because they didn’t want to be identified discussing confidential matters, feared retribution or were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The tycoon’s emergence as a central figure offers insight into how Washington is stepping up efforts to encourage US companies to pump Venezuelan oil and invest $100 billion in a country President Donald Trump describes as the 51st state. More than seven months after the US captured Nicolás Maduro, blessed his replacement and declared Venezuela open for business, significant oil deals remain elusive, held up by complex negotiations with state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA and sanctions constraints. 

In the absence of competitive bidding, progress is opaque. That’s given Betancourt tremendous sway in Venezuelan oil circles, the people said, in spite of years of investigations in Europe, the US and Venezuela over allegations of corruption, money laundering and tax fraud. He has denied any wrongdoing and was never charged with a crime.

Until recently, Betancourt avoided US soil out of concern over the American probe, people familiar with the matter said.

Betancourt himself is also a top oil player in Venezuela. His North American Blue Energy Partners, or NABEP, pumps about 200,000 barrels of crude a day from fields around Lake Maracaibo and the Orinoco Belt, according to a person familiar with the matter. That makes it Venezuela’s second-largest private-sector producer behind Chevron Corp. 

Last week, a party close to Betancourt agreed to buy the minority stake in NABEP held by Harry Sargeant III, according to people familiar with the transaction. Sargeant, a Florida oil magnate, had come under fire from Venezuelan opposition figures and US allies for allegedly propping up Maduro. Shortly after the NABEP deal was signed, the Treasury Department notified Sargeant’s attorney that it had blocked the assets of his offshore holding company. 

Betancourt declined to comment. Sargeant couldn’t be reached by telephone or email for comment through his Florida-based holding company Global Oil Management Group. NABEP didn’t reply to a request for comment. 

Betancourt, who has powerful friends in Caracas, Washington and Moscow, recently began traveling frequently from his London home to Venezuela, according to people familiar with his schedule. He regularly meets with senior officials, including US-supported acting President Delcy Rodríguez and her foreign policy adviser Félix Plasencia, and hosted a dinner for a US congressional delegation, according to people with knowledge of the meetings. 

Venezuela sits atop some of the world’s largest proven crude reserves and, from the 1950s through the 1970s, was among the world’s biggest petroleum exporters, transforming Caracas into one of Latin America’s richest capitals. Production later climbed above 3 million barrels a day before decades of neglect, corruption, expropriations, economic collapse and US sanctions sent output plunging.

Trump played up the industry’s potential in the days after Maduro’s capture. While the administration justified the nighttime raid as an effort to dismantle international narcotics trafficking, Trump said US companies would pour in to rebuild the infrastructure, production would soar and gasoline prices would fall, giving Republicans a win on a key checkbook issue ahead of midterm elections in which control of Congress is up for grabs. 

But most of the biggest US oil companies, including ExxonMobil Holdings Corp. and ConocoPhillips, remain skittish years after Venezuela expropriated their assets. So Betancourt is helping the administration steer opportunities toward the wildcatters, who are less risk-averse, and private investors, according to people familiar with the matter.

The White House described US relations with Venezuela as “extraordinary” for both sides. “We are dealing very well with President Delcy Rodríguez and her representatives. Oil is starting to flow, and large amounts of money, unseen for many years, is greatly helping the people of Venezuela,” the White House said in response to a request for comment, without directly answering questions about Betancourt’s role. 

Betancourt long operated largely behind the scenes. His role has come into sharper focus over the last month as deals began to come to fruition and Mauricio Claver-Carone, a former special envoy for Latin America who later served as an unofficial adviser on Venezuela, stepped back from the portfolio, according to people familiar with the matter.

Claver-Carone, who is close to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, helped assemble many of the people involved in executing the Trump administration’s Venezuela strategy, including Betancourt. While Claver-Carone is now less involved, many of those figures remain active, the people said.

Betancourt rose to prominence in the oil sphere by transforming NABEP from a small operator into one of the country’s leading producers. While many foreign companies reduced their footprint over the past decade amid the political turmoil, NABEP boosted production as much as 10-fold. Before leading NABEP, in the mid-2010s Betancourt invested in an operator in Colombia’s largest oil field, Rubiales. He then returned to Venezuela to partner with former Russian officials in Petrozamora, a joint venture in Lake Maracaibo.

Together with Sargeant, Betancourt also helped pioneer a more flexible contractual structure with PDVSA that has since become the model for many of the agreements now on offer to new investors, the people said.

Betancourt’s current work includes efforts tied to PCEC, a little-known California-based company that recently signed agreements to operate fields in Lake Maracaibo and the Orinoco Belt. PCEC has an agreement with NABEP for local procurement, one of more than 30 such relationships on the ground intended to help the firm reach its goal of pumping Venezuelan oil, the company said. 

PCEC doesn’t disclose its investors, but it has financing from banks and trading houses, the company added.

Betancourt’s influence has grown despite repeated legal controversies inside and outside Venezuela. 

Known in Venezuela as one of the bolichicos — entrepreneurs who amassed fortunes during former President Hugo Chávez’s rule — Betancourt co-founded Derwick Associates, which won billions of dollars in emergency power equipment contracts beginning in 2009 during years plagued by chronic blackouts.

Derwick ultimately came under scrutiny by investigators in Venezuela, the US and Spain who suspected ties to money laundering schemes involving PDVSA funds. The company and Betancourt denied the allegations. 

Venezuelan authorities closed their probe without bringing charges, according to local media reports at the time. The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request on the current status of its investigation. Spanish investigators this year shelved their case, but newspaper El Pais later reported it was reopened. Officials at Spain’s high court didn’t reply to a request for comment on the status of the case against Betancourt.

Bloomberg reported in 2019 that lawyer and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani helped represent Betancourt in a meeting with the Justice Department. Betancourt was never named in public court documents tied to the investigation.