At a Hotel in Caracas, Oil Executives Weigh Return to Venezuela (2)

Inside a chic lounge, oil lobbyists and executives rub shoulders as Spanish, French and Italian can be heard in the halls. This isn’t the ZaZa boutique hotel in Houston, where global energy top brass like to stay. It’s the Cayena Hotel in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas.

Drawn by promises of privatization and more autonomy to tap the world’s biggest crude reserves, they’re meeting with the Nicolas Maduro regime and state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA to best position themselves when doing business there is possible again. Bigger producers like Chevron Corp., France’s Total SE and Italy’s Eni SpA would ...