Venezuela is at a critical juncture in its energy history. Despite possessing one of the world's largest hydrocarbon reserves, estimated at over 300 billion barrels of oil, its potential to regain a significant position in the global energy market is currently hindered. Decades of political instability, operational decline, and international sanctions have led to a situation where much of this wealth remains untapped. As the international community anticipates a shift towards more stable governance, the opportunity to position Venezuela for reintegration into the global energy economy becomes increasingly urgent and strategic.
Amid the many challenges facing a reopening Venezuela, one initiative offers exceptional, underutilized leverage: preserving and digitizing the nation's legacy geoscience data. This is not a coventional archive project but a foundational investment in the country' stability to make informed, responsible, and efficient decisions. By digitizing geoscience data that span over a century of exploration, Venezuela can present a transparent and technically credible case for investment. For strategic investors, particularly those in the United States and allied regions, your support for this initiative is not just a financial decision but a strategic move that can help lay the groundwork for sustainable energy development.
The Hidden Crisis: Subsurface Intelligence in Decline
While Venezuela's reserves are massive—ranging from heavy oil in the Orinoco Belt to conventional and offshore plays in Maracaibo and the Caribbean margin—its ability to exploit them has diminished sharply. Production has plummeted from over 3 million barrels per day in the 1990s to under 800,000 today. Much of the technical infrastructure underpinning past success has eroded, including the stewardship of its subsurface data.
A critical challenge is that nearly all well logs, seismic surveys, and geologic interpretations are controlled by the national oil company and the government, the state oil company. These datasets are inaccessible to independent experts, private companies, or foreign investors. No formal licensing system or public data room exists. The lack of transparency hinders block evaluations, increases uncertainty, and discourages meaningful capital deployment.
Furthermore, U.S. sanctions continue to deter commercial engagement with Venezuelan institutions. However, the proposed data preservation initiative—centered exclusively on non-commercial, public-domain historical information—can be structured to remain fully compliant with OFAC regulations, avoiding any financial transactions with sanctioned entities. This opens a legal and ethical path for U.S.-based investors and institutions to participate now—well before full political normalization occurs.
Why Subsurface Data Matters to Investors
Subsurface data is not just a technical asset—it is strategic capital that underpins all energy investment. It enables:
- De-risked Exploration: Accurate geologic models improve trap, reservoir, and source rock characterization confidence.
- Reserve Certification: Reliable data is essential for estimating recoverable volumes and securing reserve-based lending.
- Efficient Licensing: Data-driven block assessments support competitive, transparent bid rounds.
- Field Redevelopment and EOR: Archived well data can reduce costs and optimize redevelopment in mature areas.
- Energy Transition Planning: Legacy field and basin data can support CO₂ storage, geothermal, and hydrogen opportunities.
Today, much of this invaluable data is at risk—stored in deteriorating formats, unindexed archives, or physical media that may never be recovered. Without intervention, an entire century of exploration and production knowledge could be lost, further delaying Venezuela's energy recovery and reducing the quality of future investment decisions. The urgency of this situation cannot be overstated.
Many countries with successful upstream sectors have established national data repositories to ensure transparent, secure, and accessible geoscience information that supports investment and sustainable development. Examples include the ANH in Colombia, maintains an open-access geoscience portal; BDEP of the ANP in Brazil, offering integrated seismic and well data; CNIH of the CNH in Mexico, which supports technical evaluations and bid round preparation; NDR of the NUPRC in Nigeria, a centralized digital repository for licensing and resource management; ANPG in Angola, facilitating upstream licensing through structured data access; MPM under Petronas in Malaysia, providing data services for both national and international stakeholders; and DISKOS of the NPD in Norway, one of the world’s most advanced and collaborative subsurface data sharing platforms. In this global context, U3 Explore Venezuela can serve as the foundational step toward creating a similar modern geoscience repository—one that transforms Venezuela’s legacy data into a transparent, investor-ready, and scalable national platform aligned with international best practices and of course country-specific R&D and academic intererest.
A Scalable, Digital Solution: The U3 Explore Venezuela Initiative
To reverse this decline, U3 Explore Venezuela proposes the creation of a Digital Subsurface Repository—a secure, cloud-based platform offering verified, GIS-integrated, andinvestor-ready data access to qualified users. This repository will allow energy companies, academic institutions, and government agencies to retrieve informations and reports in a standardized and searchable format.
This system is designed to grow modularly and will also merge seamlessly with global and regional databases, including CO₂ storage mapping and hydrocarbon analog libraries. It will support due diligence for upcoming licensing rounds and attract service companies eager to deploy advanced analytics, AI, and digital twin technologies. The platform is engineered to support scalability, investor outreach, and future integration with global ESG and transparency standards.
At the heart of U3 Explore's mission is a community of committed professionals—including senior international geoscientists as well experienced contributors like Victor Graterol, a recognized authority on gravity data interpretation in Latin America and the Caribbean. These experts are helping to recover lost data and mentoring the next generation of Venezuelan geoscientists. They view this initiative as a legacy project supporting technical excellence, national pride, and long-term global competitiveness.
Cost-Efficient,High-Impact Investment
Compared with high costs of modern oil and gas operations, the investment required to preserve Venezuela's national geoscience data is exceptionally low yet strategically impactful. Drilling a single onshore well in Venezuela can cost between $6 million and $12 million, while an offshore well ranges from $75 million to $125 million. In contrast, the three-year Sustainable Development Data Center proposal could cover a fraction of the lowest drilling well, aimed at recovering and digitizing the whole country's historical subsurface data.
For less than the cost of a single well, an investors or institutional sponsors could help unlock critical geological intelligence that supports the evaluation of dozens of oil fields, hundreds of prospects, and thousands of historical wells. This effort not only leverages the legacy knowledge of past exploration but also honors and amplifies the contributions of active geoscientists who continue to preserve and interpret these datasets.
For less than the cost of a single exploration oil and gas well, institutional sponsors could enable a full-scale geoscience recovery effort is that supports hundred of prospects, and thousands of historical wells. Investors who support this effort are not just reducing exploration risk—they are positioning themselves as technical enablers of Venezuela's energy resurgence.
Call to Action: Become a Legacy Builder
Actus Veritas Geoscience has delivered expert-driven subsurface consulting across frontier and mature basins for over nine years. Over the past five years, the U3 Explore network has built a respected platform to share geoscience knowledge and advance digital tools. The U3 Explore Venezuela initiative is the natural extension of this mission, scaling the effort into a national movement to unlock legacy data and promote transparent, knowledge-based investment.
Beyond its technical utility, this platform supports Venezuela's broader reintegration into the international energy system, collaborative science, and responsible development.
We invite strategic sponsors, corporate ESG funds, philanthropic institutions, and technical service providers to become founding partners in this initiative. A three-year sponsorship commitment will directly support the data recovery, digitization, quality assurance, and deployment needed to bring this vision to life. Your engagement ensures this knowledge remains accessible—not only for today's investors but also for future generations of Venezuelan and international geoscientists.
Contact us at info@u3explore.com
