US President Donald Trump on Friday said his administration has reached a major oil deal with Venezuela that gives the US majority control of 65 billion barrels of proven petroleum reserves.
The deal — which Trump called “the biggest oil deal in world history” — would bring about US$100 billion in private investment to Venezuela, US and Venezuelan officials said.
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Its government has operated under intense pressure and close scrutiny from the Trump administration since the US in January abducted then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
Photo: Reuters
Washington allowed then-Venezuelan vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, to stay on and serve as interim leader so long as she toes the US line.
Trump has made no secret of his desire to secure Venezuelan oil for the US, and in his post announcing the deal on his Truth Social platform, he said it would more than double US oil reserves.
Interim leader Rodriguez confirmed what she called a “historic agreement” that would “have a significant impact on the rebirth of our nation.”
Writing on social media, she hailed potential investment of “more than US$100 billion and more than US$209 billion in tax revenue for the state.”
Trump said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had reached the deal with Rodriguez “through a partnership with private business.”
“This Transaction will greatly strengthen the already growing relationship between Venezuela and the United States!” Trump wrote.
Jorge Pinon, a senior researcher at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, said the agreement was unconventional and many questions remained about how the oil assets would be transferred, “not to a private enterprise, but to another country.”
“We don’t know how the transfer would take place,” he said. “Is it a sale? Is it a title transfer? Is it only transferred once the reserves are actually produced?”
The news site Axios had on Thursday reported that the two countries were in talks on a dozen productive oil fields with 90 billion barrels of proven reserves — about one-third of Venezuela’s total proven reserves of 300 billion barrels.
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