Hiring
The big oilfield service companies are advertising dozens of jobs in Venezuela, an early sign that a U.S.-backed push to rebuild the country’s oil industry is turning into work on the ground. Reuters reported the job listings on Monday, Oct. 19. Weatherford International, Baker Hughes, Halliburton and SLB all have Venezuela roles open on their websites.
Job postings are not hires. The listings show demand for skilled oilfield workers, but they do not show how many people will be hired or when the work will start.
Weatherford's postings, checked
Reuters reported that Weatherford, which had scaled back in Venezuela in 2019, has at least 20 open positions there, mostly in the oil and gas hubs of Anaco and Maturín. The company began advertising them last month. A check of Weatherford’s careers site on Oct. 20 found 21 Venezuela listings. Fifteen were based in Anaco, in Anzoátegui state, and six in Maturín, in Monagas state. The earliest went up on Sept. 16 and the most recent on Oct. 15.
The roles are mostly field and technical work. They include a superintendent, a drilling engineer, an operations manager for intervention services and drilling tools, an operations coordinator for directional drilling, and field specialists for directional drilling and for measurement-while-drilling and logging-while-drilling tools. There are also field operators for tubular running services, a wireline operations supervisor, a welder, a repair-and-maintenance supervisor, a warehouse leader and a technical sales representative. Five Maturín positions posted on Oct. 13 are for field engineers, operators and specialists. Nine of the 21 listings are written in Spanish.
According to a source cited by Reuters, Weatherford is set to host a ceremony with Eni this month. Eni has engaged Weatherford to help raise production after the Italian producer reached an agreement with state-run PDVSA in September to expand in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt. Weatherford and Eni did not reply to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Other service firms
Reuters reported that Baker Hughes has about a dozen openings on its website for roles in Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second-largest oil region. This month the company signed an agreement with PDVSA, engineering firm Lindsayca and developer Fulcrum LNG to reactivate gas infrastructure. SLB lists 35 vacancies in Anaco, Maturín and Caracas, some posted about six months ago. Halliburton said in early October it was seeking to expand its talent network in Venezuela. Baker Hughes said it does not comment on personnel, SLB declined to comment, and Halliburton did not immediately respond, Reuters said. These three companies’ counts come from Reuters and were not independently checked against their sites.
Rebuilding from a low base
Most foreign service companies shut down or shrank their Venezuela operations after U.S. sanctions in 2019. They laid off or transferred staff and removed equipment. The new postings come as the Trump administration promotes a $100 billion oil revival plan following the capture of then-President Nicolás Maduro in January. Reuters noted that some major producers want political stability and clear legal rules before committing large sums.
Equipment is returning slowly. Only two drilling rigs were active in Venezuela this month, according to Baker Hughes data cited by Reuters. North American Blue Energy Partners said it received two drilling units last week, and Chevron is expected to activate four soon. Patterson-UTI is shipping components for 10 older rigs. CEO Andy Hendricks said the company has not used that type of rig in the United States in about 15 years. “It’ll be fine for Venezuela,” he told Reuters.
Venezuela holds the world’s largest oil reserves but pumps only about 1.2 million barrels a day. Welligence Energy Analytics expects deployments through the end of 2027 to focus mostly on workover rigs that reopen and repair wells at mature fields. The consultancy projects output could reach about 1.5 million barrels a day by late 2027. “In reality, this will take time,” said Andres Armijos, Welligence’s head for Latin America.
For workers, the openings are concentrated in a few eastern oil towns and in specialized field and engineering trades. Whether they lead to sustained hiring will depend on rigs actually arriving and on the political and legal conditions producers say they need.
Sources
- Reuters (Georgina McCartney and Marianna Parraga), via WIXX, “Venezuela oilfield hiring picks up as first wave of investment builds,” October 19, 2026. https://wixx.com/2026/10/19/venezuela-oilfield-hiring-picks-up-as-first-wave-of-investment-builds/
- Weatherford International, “Careers: job openings in Venezuela,” accessed October 20, 2026. https://fa-exmi-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX_1/jobs?location=Venezuela&locationId=300000000465745&locationLevel=country
Featured photo: Oil derricks stand in Lake Maracaibo off Lagunillas, on the lake's eastern shore in Zulia state, Venezuela, at sunset, March 12, 2014. Representative image; not a site tied to the job postings described. Photo: Breddyjgalvis, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). Cropped from the original.
