Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam is putting his own money behind what he calls a “superlative” opportunity to become a significant oil producer in Venezuela, comparing it to the once-in-a-generation bets that made him a billionaire.

Ehrsam’s startup, Primavera, is preparing to take over operation of several oil fields in the South American country afterg multiple contracts with state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA in recent weeks. Primavera hired oil industry veterans from Chevron Corp. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. to help build out infrastructure to support conventional and heavy-oil production.

“Anytime a country goes through that kind of economic disaster, I think there’s just so much low-hanging fruit to improve people’s lives by jump starting the economy,” Ehrsam, 38, said in an interview. “These opportunities, that kind of superlativeness, is something that you see maybe a couple times in your lifetime.”Primavera has a “near-term” goal of producing 100,000 barrels of crude a day, according to Manuel Iribarren, 28, who is a partner with Ehrsam in the company.

Iribarren declined to say what fields Primavera expects to take over and how the deals would be financed. Bloomberg previously reported that the startup is seeking control of the Boca, Guico and Guara fields of Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt. The blocks are currently operated by Brazil’s Alvorada Heavy Industries Ltda.

There’s “a commitment on our side to invest a substantial amount of capital to recover a number of fields in the country and bring operational excellence and technology to maximizing their output,” Iribarren said. “We don’t necessarily want to get into specifics beyond that at this stage.”After decades of being frozen out by US sanctions, Venezuela has become a hotbed of dealmaking after President Donald Trump captured socialist leader Nicolás Maduro in January and urged US investors to rebuild the country’s oil industry under acting president Delcy Rodríguez.

Oil majors including Chevron and Eni SpA have led the charge, but the Trump administration has also encouraged less risk-averse entrepreneurs with little experience in oil and gas such as Primavera as US and other Western companies take control of some of the world’s largest oil reserves.

Ehrsam, who also founded crypto-asset investment firm Paradigm, has emerged as one of the best-connected newcomers pursuing opportunities in Venezuela. Just weeks after Maduro was captured, he flew to Caracas with Iribarren, a Venezuelan-born, UK-raised Silicon Valley entrepreneur. The pair lived in the five-star Cayena Hotel for weeks investigating what it would take to create an oil company, win contracts and raise production in a country that has proved to be a graveyard for private capital for decades.

With a net worth of $2.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Ehrsam is one of three investors funding the new venture. Iribarren and Dheeraj Verma, 49, former president of Houston-based oil and gas private equity firm Quantum Energy Partners, round out the trio.

“We’ve had a lot of experience in building generational companies that define new missions that feel risky or frontier to others and over time become consensus,” Iribarren said. “And so we decided that this was the new mission.”Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in the 1970s and again in the 2000s, when mismanagement and corruption gutted operations. At just over 1 million barrels, current daily crude production is a third of its last peak in the 1990s. The economic collapse that followed caused hyperinflation and crime to flourish, encouraging millions of Venezuelans to flee abroad.

“Hydrocarbons is the first major leg of the stool in the economy to get the economy back on its feet,” Ehrsam said. “That is the key to the country stabilizing.”Primavera hired Oscar Quintero, a Venezuelan national who previously led Occidental’s enhanced oil recovery division, as well as three senior executives from Chevron. Mario Gandara will be chief commercial officer, Jorge Castro joins as senior vice president of finance and Ivette Lopez becomes vice president of legal.

Verma, the former private equity investor, compares the opportunity in Venezuela to that of US shale two decades ago. From North Dakota to Texas, it was smaller, private operators who perfected horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to unlock oil and gas trapped in hitherto impermeable shale rock and turned the US into the world’s biggest producer of both commodities.

“This reminds me a lot about those early days of shale,” Verma said. “Entrepreneurs are going to bring a lot of people, technology on the ground sooner, faster, quicker.”