Veteran oil wildcatter Bill Armstrong, who has secured a deal to explore 5mn acres off the coast of Venezuela, said it will take years to reach first production if successful.
Denver-based Armstrong Oil & Gas, the company he founded, is ready to carry out seismic testing in the region after reaching an agreement with the interim Venezuela government, he said.
"It won't be fast," Armstrong said today at the Super DUG 2026 conference in Houston, Texas. "The data quality is old — vintage seismic — and it's almost all 2D data, so you have to shoot it all with 3D, and that is not fast nor is it cheap."
He said it could take five years to deliver the first volumes, though that was a "wild guess" and it hinges on the company making a commercial discovery in the first place.
Armstrong was among the almost two dozen oil executives who attended a White House meeting in January as President Donald Trump pushed for the industry to invest as much as $100bn to help kickstart Venezuela's long-neglected energy sector. Deals announced so far have largely centered on smaller US independents, while bigger firms such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, which had their assets seized under previous Venezuelan governments, have adopted a more cautious approach.
Armstrong, who helped revive interest in Alaska's North Slope after the Pikka discovery in 2013, said he never thought he would get an opportunity to tap Venezuela's oil riches.
"Venezuela is like a Mecca for oil and gas," he said. "It's like going into Saudi Arabia or something, you know, where it's just like so prolific."
That said, there were still risks involved and he cautioned that wildcatting was not for the faint-hearted.
"The politics are good right now," Armstrong said. "You got to make sure the Venezuelans want you there. Right now, they do."
