Chevron's Man Was CIA's, Too --- Ali Moshiri helped steer Trump away from backing Venezuelan opposition

“In the months before President Trump moved to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the Central Intelligence Agency turned to an old friend for advice on who should replace the autocratic leftist.

 

Former Chevron executive Ali Moshiri told the agency that if the U.S. government tried to oust the entire Maduro regime and install the democratic opposition led by Maria Corina Machado it would have another quagmire like Iraq on its hands, according to people familiar with the matter.

 

She didn't have the support of the country's security services or control of its oil infrastructure, Moshiri argued.

 

His recommendation: Stick for now with another autocratic leftist, Maduro's deputy and economic manager Delcy Rodriguez. The option was later presented to Trump in a secret CIA assessment.

 

Hours after American commandos dragged Maduro out of his fortified compound, Trump echoed the sentiment. It would be "very tough" for Machado to take over, he said. "She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country."

 

Moshiri's hidden hand in Washington spycraft, revealed here for the first time, offers a window into how Trump embraced the energy industry's unsentimental playbook for dealing with autocratic regimes. And it marks a dramatic turnaround for Chevron's prospects in Venezuela, where the company's decision to stay invested during decades of political upheaval now leaves it with a strategic advantage as the oil begins to gush again.

 

In a statement, Chevron said that "between spring of 2025 and the removal of Maduro, Chevron did not authorize anyone working for, or on behalf of, the company to engage with the CIA related to Venezuela's leadership, including assessments of government officials or opposition leaders."

 

It added that the company had no advance knowledge of Maduro's ouster, and didn't coordinate or advocate for it. Chevron added that it "does not have a business relationship with Ali Moshiri -- formal or informal."

 

Moshiri, who left the company in 2017 and ended his consulting relationship with Chevron in 2024, declined to discuss any contact he had with the CIA, saying: "You know I can't disclose any of that."

 

In an interview, he freely acknowledged sharing his skepticism of the Venezuelan opposition with Washington -- the same perspective he expresses in public. "Venezuelan opposition believes that we want to build from the bottom up, that we need to get rid of all this," Moshiri said. "And that's the model of Afghanistan and Iraq."

 

It isn't uncommon for American businessmen who travel extensively overseas to brief the CIA on their interactions with foreign government officials. In response to detailed questions from The Wall Street Journal, CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons said: "This story is fantastical and relies on false, unverified, anonymous claims."

 

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Chevron played no role in the operation that removed Maduro, which she said was "the result of meticulous planning at the highest levels of the administration, informed by detailed intelligence, and flawless execution by the Department of Justice and Department of War."

 

Moshiri's insights were only part of the overall intelligence picture that the U.S. government was collecting on Venezuela, which ranged from electronic surveillance to a covert CIA team that was secretly embedded on the ground to a source within Maduro's inner circle, the Journal previously reported. U.S. officials were familiar with Rodriguez's career and understood that she would potentially be amenable to a working relationship, an administration official said.

 

Still, as the longtime head of Chevron's oil production in Venezuela, Moshiri had unparalleled access to the highest circles of power in the regime, including the late President Hugo Chavez, who called him a "dear friend." At a time when the agency had little expertise of its own in the South American country, and scrambled to divert resources from counterterrorism to plug the gap, it in part relied on Moshiri and others who used to work for Chevron to keep an eye on the political situation.

 

Now, Chevron is poised to take a key role in developing Venezuela's oil reserves, which are the largest in the world by some estimates. It is the only major U.S. oil company positioned to quickly increase output there and has said it aims to increase its Venezuelan oil production by up to 50% within the next 18 to 24 months. The potential payday validates the company's strategy to stay put as rivals pulled out -- a giant win for Chief Executive Mike Wirth.

 

"For more than a century, Chevron's presence in Venezuela has focused on safely producing energy, supporting jobs, and contributing to economic stability that benefits both the Venezuelan people and U.S. energy security," the company said. "That longstanding record should not be recast to suggest motives or actions that are inconsistent with Chevron's history, values, or conduct."

 

On the ground, the Trump administration is benefiting from Chevron's extensive network. The company escorted Energy Secretary Chris Wright on his visit last month, according to a copy of Wright's agenda. Chevron representatives delivered personal protective equipment to the delegation at its hotel in Caracas, ferried the press contingent that accompanied Wright around the country in armored vehicles and hosted the group at its operations in Morichal, the agenda said.

 

Meanwhile, Moshiri is offering advice on the new leadership of Venezuela's state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PdVSA, as his Amos Fund raises $3 billion for Venezuelan oil projects.

 

During his time at Chevron, Ali Moshiri did what few other American capitalists managed to do: get Hugo Chavez, the fiery socialist who used Venezuela's oil riches to challenge the U.S., to trust him.

 

It helped that Moshiri wasn't originally from the U.S. He grew up in Iran, came to Oklahoma to get a degree in petroleum engineering and joined Chevron just after finishing graduate school in 1978. He married a woman he met in Venezuela, learned Spanish and developed an unusual accent that seemingly blended the multiple languages he spoke. Associates describe him as a man who prides himself on helping his adopted American homeland -- and also in doing favors for others he can cash in on later.

 

Moshiri frequently wears designer suits and horn-rimmed glasses that rest below a swept-back wave of gray hair. He's spent a career traveling to far-flung and sometimes dangerous regions for Chevron -- Angola, Mexico, Colombia -- navigating regimes of varying political ideologies. He speaks in a self-deprecating tone about how he'll tolerate just about anyone, noting with a wry smile that his own children are socialists -- until they ask to fly private.

 

Moshiri took over Chevron's Latin America operations at a time when the company's presence in Venezuela had become a U.S. national security issue after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. U.S. officials wanted to ensure reliable access to crude in the Western Hemisphere in the face of instability in the Middle East. Condoleezza Rice, who became President George W. Bush's national security adviser and later secretary of state, was a longtime Chevron board member. The company had even named one of its oil tankers after her.

 

As Chevron cemented its strategic importance for the U.S., Moshiri's inroads with Venezuela's leader proved critical.

 

In the early 2000s, Moshiri told the Journal, he accompanied Chavez to the site of a planned deepwater port in northeastern Venezuela, to bring offshore gas into the country. PdVSA executives laid out a model of the port, and said it would be built in 18 months. Moshiri, who noticed that fallen trees on the side of the road still had green leaves, was skeptical. "They just cut the trees for you to come in here," Moshiri told him. It's never going to get done on that timeline, he said.

 

When Colombia, led by Alvaro Uribe, an icon of the Latin American right, was resisting selling natural gas that Chevron was extracting there to Venezuela, Moshiri found a way to bridge the gap. With both Chavez and Uribe in attendance at a regional conference in Colombia, Moshiri urged Chavez to tell Uribe Venezuela would build a gas pipeline. Otherwise, Moshiri said, Uribe wouldn't agree to the deal. Chavez told Uribe on the spot that PdVSA would build it, and they signed the deal.

 

The CIA also took notice of Moshiri's connections. According to people familiar with the matter, he has since the days of Chavez provided information about Venezuela's leaders to the agency, with the approval of Chevron's senior-most executives.

 

A Chevron spokesman said: "We have no knowledge of the validity of the claims made by anonymous sources about conversations that may or may not have taken place nearly two decades ago."

 

When Chavez began nationalizing oil fields in 2006, sharply raising taxes, and rewriting contracts to make PdVSA the operator and majority owner of most projects, Exxon Mobil and other Western firms left, suing over the billions of dollars in assets and equipment they left behind.

 

Moshiri made the case for Chevron to stay, telling executives that access to Venezuela's oil would one day be valuable. Moshiri once told a colleague "you know investing in Venezuela is risky, but it's riskier to invest in Chile" which was then considered the region's corporate-friendly environment. Chile, Moshiri pointed out, has no oil.

 

For other colleagues, Moshiri's optimism could also be read as naivete. As oil prices dropped and PdVSA became a piggy bank for Chavez's pet projects, including the sale of chickens, oil production slumped. Operations fell into disrepair. Moshiri sank more Chevron money into PdVSA's ventures to eke out modest returns.

 

"He may have picked the wrong strategy," said Luis Pacheco, a former PdVSA executive.

 

After Chavez's 2013 death, Moshiri deepened his relationship with Rodriguez, a Chavez acolyte who became a central figure in a regime that destroyed the country's economy. Just two months later, Moshiri led Chevron to sign a $2 billion loan deal with PdVSA, telling the Journal at the time Chevron would continue to work with PdVSA because it believed Venezuela still had significant resources to tap.

 

Rodriguez rose to the senior ranks of Venezuela's government. As Maduro's vice president, she managed the country's oil sector and oversaw the state security apparatus, which is accused of jailing thousands of political prisoners in detention centers where many were held without charges and tortured.

 

Chevron and the few remaining Western companies there saw Rodriguez as someone they could do business with. Moshiri said she was a "tough, determined negotiator" who was willing to change her mind when she heard a convincing argument.

 

After Moshiri retired in 2017, some senior Chevron executives began rethinking their commitment to Venezuela. But Moshiri, still on the payroll as an adviser, once again helped persuade the company to stay.

 

Under Trump, Chevron's pragmatic relations with the Venezuelan regime threatened to become a liability. Some of the president's closest advisers had long viewed the company suspiciously, believing its oil revenues had helped keep Maduro in power.

 

Washington recognized Venezuela's embattled opposition as the country's rightful leaders when in 2024 international observers declared Maduro had stolen the presidential election. Marco Rubio and other Trump allies, including his son Don Jr., have championed opposition leader Maria Corina Machado as the courageous face of the legitimate government.

 

The president ordered Chevron, the largest foreign investor in Venezuela, to wind down its operations. As Trump's new secretary of state, Rubio said Chevron's Biden-era license to operate there had "shamefully bankrolled the illegitimate Maduro regime."

 

Donald Trump Jr. broke the news himself to Machado. "Literally just now my father killed the Chevron license," Trump Jr. told Machado on his podcast.

 

The president wanted Maduro gone fast, but the CIA had little insight into Venezuela, having spent the past decades focused on terrorism and China. It lost key visibility on the ground after the U.S. Embassy closed in 2019, forcing it to shut down its station and remove personnel operating under diplomatic cover.

 

"Venezuela was a black box. It is a territory in which we have blinded ourselves," says Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA analyst.

 

John Ratcliffe, Trump's new CIA director, was shocked at the agency's limited capabilities in the region, according to people familiar with his approach. He was determined to reposition the CIA from its decades-old central focus on fighting overseas terrorists to tackling problems in America's backyard. The idea wasn't just to send spies to gather more information, but return to the early days of the spy agency when it used hard-edged covert operations to shape the Western Hemisphere to Washington's liking.

 

Trump had dispatched special envoy Ric Grenell to Caracas to negotiate with Maduro on deportations and hostage releases, which was taken as a signal that he was willing to keep him in power if he cooperated. In the spring, Maduro turned down several U.S. offers to step down, receive amnesty and leave the country, according to people familiar with the proposed deal.

 

As the CIA began to create an alternative plan, Chevron -- the last major U.S. oil company with a sustained presence in Venezuela -- found a more receptive audience. CEO Wirth had several conversations with Trump about Venezuela last year, according to people familiar with the matter, explaining the situation on the ground and promising that Chevron could boost oil production there.

 

Trump had vowed to voters to keep the U.S. out of foreign entanglements. If the agency was going to oust Maduro it needed to be clean and have a quick payoff that Trump could claim as a win. Wirth's promised oil boost was seen as a way to offset inflation and a potential political windfall.

 

The CIA turned back to former Chevron personnel who understood the insular working of Maduro's inner circle and its convoluted oil sector. Moshiri explained to the CIA that the Venezuelan opposition wasn't capable of keeping the oil flowing, let alone running the country.

 

"If they reach out, we talk to our government," Moshiri said in the interview, in which he declined to talk about any contact with the CIA. "We are citizens of the country."” [1]

 

1. Chevron's Man Was CIA's, Too --- Ali Moshiri helped steer Trump away from backing Venezuelan opposition. Schectman, Joel; Matthews, Christopher M; Bergengruen, Vera.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 16 Mar 2026: A1.