Sep 1, 2026 · 22 min · 9 segments
Following the recent Image conference in Houston and publication of our latest Venezuela Scout Insight, the scouting team joins host Bruce Walker. Victoria Phillips talks about the growing but guarded…
Tommy LiskeyGuest
Troy GrantGuest
Bruce WalkerHost
Victoria PhillipsGuest
It was nice to kind of get back into that world and sort of see how everything's going on.
I think my takeaway from the conference was that there's a lot of low-key optimism amongst certainly a lot of the service companies and things on sort of expiration upticks and opportunities there after, you know, fairly large downturn with ONG majors kind of focusing on returns for shareholders, etc.
They're obviously very excited on the latest sort of APA ENI well that they're going to be drilling after the failure of the Raya well.
And yeah, there was a lot of talk as well on the equatorial margin, in particular the Morpho well that Petrobras had been drilling.
It certainly wasn't a center stage of the conversation, but everyone that I spoke to definitely mentioned it.
know bruce i think um yeah you know it's always interesting right it's a little bit like uh uh speed dating these conferences right because sometimes they're there but they're very covert right you'll see them with the uh their badges flipped around so you can't see who they're with you know and so as troy pointed out you know it's always dominated the booths at least right the regulators and whatnot and uh but sometimes you really got to have a hawkeye to this spot people from the bigger NOCs of the Americas at times.
And, you know, most of the time you would run at the cocktails rather than, say, at the booth or at the event.
Because a lot of these guys just walk around, they're a little bit incognito, right? Kind of snipping around to see what the best opportunities are in the Americas.
I mean, I guess Venezuela in general had a much stronger presence than the previous year.
You know, they had presentations at both image and there was a separate venue where they held the Venezuela Energy Showcase, which was jam-packed, very busy.
They had speakers from both PDVSA and the ministry, so that made it very popular.
There appeared to be a more optimistic opinion on Venezuela, especially with the new revised hydrocarbons framework.
However, sentiment still remains pretty cautious as investors continue to seek a greater certainty around that but but yeah there's a growing sense of momentum there with many hoping that next year's discussions will focus less on the potential opportunities which is what everyone's talking about this year and more on projects that have moved into execution but yeah on Venezuela we actually recently just published an insight piece on it if you want to talk about that a bit more Tom
It was nice to kind of get back into that world and sort of see how everything's going on.
I think my takeaway from the conference was that there's a lot of low-key optimism amongst certainly a lot of the service companies and things on sort of expiration upticks and opportunities there after, you know, fairly large downturn with ONG majors kind of focusing on returns for shareholders, etc.
They're obviously very excited on the latest sort of APA ENI well that they're going to be drilling after the failure of the Raya well.
And yeah, there was a lot of talk as well on the equatorial margin, in particular the Morpho well that Petrobras had been drilling.
It certainly wasn't a center stage of the conversation, but everyone that I spoke to definitely mentioned it.
know bruce i think um yeah you know it's always interesting right it's a little bit like uh uh speed dating these conferences right because sometimes they're there but they're very covert right you'll see them with the uh their badges flipped around so you can't see who they're with you know and so as troy pointed out you know it's always dominated the booths at least right the regulators and whatnot and uh but sometimes you really got to have a hawkeye to this spot people from the bigger NOCs of the Americas at times.
And, you know, most of the time you would run at the cocktails rather than, say, at the booth or at the event.
Because a lot of these guys just walk around, they're a little bit incognito, right? Kind of snipping around to see what the best opportunities are in the Americas.
I mean, I guess Venezuela in general had a much stronger presence than the previous year.
You know, they had presentations at both image and there was a separate venue where they held the Venezuela Energy Showcase, which was jam-packed, very busy.
They had speakers from both PDVSA and the ministry, so that made it very popular.
There appeared to be a more optimistic opinion on Venezuela, especially with the new revised hydrocarbons framework.
However, sentiment still remains pretty cautious as investors continue to seek a greater certainty around that but but yeah there's a growing sense of momentum there with many hoping that next year's discussions will focus less on the potential opportunities which is what everyone's talking about this year and more on projects that have moved into execution but yeah on Venezuela we actually recently just published an insight piece on it if you want to talk about that a bit more Tom
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