PREVIEW-US energy secretary set to arrive in Venezuela with Herculean task of oil recovery

By Marianna Parraga and Nathan Crooks

HOUSTON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Venezuela will host U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright this week, marking the highest-level U.S. visit focused on energy policy to the OPEC nation in nearly three decades as Washington conducts its first on-the-ground assessment of the oil industry it is proposing to rebuild.

Wright is scheduled to land in Caracas on Wednesday, a day after the U.S. issued a general license authorizing the exploration and production of oil and gas in Venezuela. His agenda is expected to include meetings with interim president and oil minister Delcy Rodriguez, government officials and executives from companies including Chevron CVX.N and Spain's Repsol REP.MC, said sources familiar with the preparations.

Wright is expected to stay through Friday and to have meetings with local consumer goods companies before visiting Petropiar, the largest oil project Chevron and state energy company PDVSA operate, in Venezuela's main oil region, the Orinoco Belt.

The trip follows the capture of President Nicolas Maduro by U.S. forces in early January, a flagship $2 billion oil supply deal agreed by the U.S. and Venezuela shortly after, and a $100 billion reconstruction plan for the country's energy industry being promoted by President Donald Trump.

Wright faces the Herculean task of organizing the recovery of Venezuela's oil industry from ashes after decades of underinvestment, mismanagement and harsh U.S. sanctions, while putting U.S. investors in front of the line. He will face a political context still quite volatile after a high-profile opposition leader was released from jail earlier this week only to be re-arrested hours later.

The visit reflects a longer-term U.S. geostrategic interest in Venezuelan oil as Washington seeks to reshape global energy markets while pressuring Russia, according to Thomas O'Donnell, an analyst who specializes in energy geopolitics.

The Trump administration has moved beyond simply detaching Venezuela from Russian and Chinese influence to pursuing what he calls a "doctrine of American energy dominance" that could provide the U.S. capacity to eventually take Russian oil offline if geopolitically required, he said.

"This is an active geostrategic, geo-economic plan to use American oil abundance and cooperation with the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf States and Venezuela and Guyana to reshape the global oil market," he added.

Venezuela's National Assembly last month approved a sweeping reform to the country's primary oil law, which grants operational and financial autonomy to foreign producers as a first step to encourage investment.

Senator John Hickenlooper, a Democrat from energy-producing Colorado, told reporters on Tuesday after a classified briefing by Wright that "the whole thing ... is like doing an impossibly difficult high dive, or an impossibly difficult freestyle skiing flip maneuver. All we can do is hope that it succeeds."