How Chevron secured its place as Venezuela’s largest foreign investor

The oil company is clinging to its role as the largest foreign investor in Venezuela, where it has operated for more than a century, as President Trump ratchets up his effort to squeeze strongman Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. has amassed the biggest American military buildup in the Caribbean since the 1980s to exert pressure on Maduro, who Washington says is running a drug cartel financed by stolen oil. Trump ordered a blockade Tuesday of all sanctioned tankers moving crude in and out of Venezuela, leaving Chevron as one of last big shippers of the country’s oil. Chevron and its chief…