In short: No Venezuela news — the majors' return is slower than Washington hoped (Chevron producing and exporting; Exxon and ConocoPhillips still out; the deals so far are with service providers and smaller US operators). "No news on New Stratus in Venezuela, but they are close to signing in Colombia. I will remind subscribers that this is a very speculative stock."
New Stratus is the speculative Venezuela position: a small company hoping to restart oil fields in a country with the world's largest reserves, now that the Maduro government is gone.
The update this month is really about who isn't showing up. Half a year after the change of government, Exxon and ConocoPhillips still have not returned, and negotiations with the state oil company are moving far slower than Washington expected. Chevron, already there, keeps producing. The deals that are getting signed are with service firms and small operators — which is precisely New Stratus's category, and cuts both ways: less competition for assets, but also a warning that the majors do not yet consider the terms safe.
Meanwhile the actual near-term catalyst has moved countries: "no news on New Stratus in Venezuela, but they are close to signing in Colombia." His own risk label stands unchanged — "a very speculative stock."
In short: New AIA Portfolio addition — the first mover re-entering Venezuela, intending to reacquire the oil fields it already had a deal on, then hire oilfield service companies to reactivate wells that have been out of service: "No exploration risk initially. The oil is there." CEO José Francisco Arata is a Venezuelan oil-industry veteran, insiders own ~40% after a $6.5M placement, and the company is selling everything except this and a Colombian deal. "This is still very speculative, but the asymmetry of owning one of the only publicly traded ways to play the re-emergence of the Venezuelan oil industry is worth the risk in my view."
Venezuela sits on one of the largest oil reserve bases on earth, but decades of nationalization and neglect let the wells and equipment fall apart, so production collapsed. After the US operation that removed Maduro in January, the replacement government rolled back the Chávez-era rules that kept foreign companies out. New Stratus is a tiny Toronto-Venture-listed company trying to be first through the door — it already had a signed deal on specific Venezuelan fields before the invasion, and now intends to reacquire them.
The plan is deliberately unglamorous: no drilling into unknown rock, no exploration gamble. Hire proper oilfield-service crews, go back to wells that already exist and have simply been sitting idle, and get them pumping again. Whatever cash those wells produce pays to restart the next batch — a compounding loop rather than a single big bet. Polomny has run this play twice before and made large returns both times: Bankers Petroleum, which revived an old field in Albania and was bought by a Chinese company, and Hurricane Hydrocarbons, which revived a Soviet-era field in Kazakhstan.
What makes him think this management can get the deal: the CEO is Venezuelan and worked in the country's oil industry in the 1980s and 90s, and a former head of the state oil company and of OPEC sat on the board until 2023 — "they are people who know people." Insiders own roughly 40% of the shares and just put more money in through a $6.5 million placement, so they lose with you if it fails. The honest risk: this is a microcap in a country that has expropriated foreign oil assets before, and "still very speculative" is his own label. It is sized as a lottery ticket with real odds, not a core holding.
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.