Chevron plans to significantly expand its operations in Venezuela, the U.S. oil giant said on Wednesday, taking yet another step to broaden the U.S. sphere of influence in the South American country. The Houston-based company, already Venezuela’s largest private oil producer, said it would more than double its production in the country over the next five years to 600,000 barrels a day. That represents over half of Venezuela’s current output. Chevron, which is gaining access to new areas in the oil-rich Orinoco Belt region, plans to invest more than $7 billion in Venezuela in that period.

The company announced its plans days after President Trump said his administration was pursuing a highly unusual partnership with a different oil company that would give the U.S. government a direct hand in extracting oil on foreign soil. The two deals are separate, but both advance Mr. Trump’s goal of exerting much more control over Venezuela’s energy industry after U.S. forces captured the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January.

Under pressure from the Trump administration, Venezuela has been making changes to attract American companies and other foreign investors roughly two decades after the country nationalized the oil industry. In January, the country’s National Assembly voted to give foreign companies much greater control over their Venezuelan operations. Chevron, in turn, has been steadily expanding in the Orinoco Belt, including by agreeing earlier this year to trade assets with Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela.

That said, the Trump administration’s new partnership, which is with an influential and divisive Venezuelan businessman, Alejandro Betancourt López, may complicate Chevron’s standing in the country by elevating a competitor. Mr. Betancourt’s family controls Venezuela’s second-largest private oil producer, North American Blue Energy Partners. Under the deal announced by the administration, the U.S. government would receive the option to acquire an ownership stake of 35 percent in the parent company of North American Blue Energy Partners.