President Trump announced Friday that the United States has struck an agreement granting an American-led joint venture effective majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela's oil reserves, a deal his administration is calling the largest of its kind in the country's history and the clearest evidence yet of how thoroughly Washington's relationship with Caracas has been remade since the capture of Nicolás Maduro nine months ago.
Trump described the agreement in a social media post as "the biggest oil deal in world history," saying it comes "at no cost to" American taxpayers. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who helped negotiate the terms alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, called the arrangement "a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people." On the Venezuelan side, acting President Delcy Rodríguez confirmed what she called a "historic agreement," according to NPR's reporting on the announcement.
The numbers behind the deal
The agreement covers 17 oil fields with proven reserves of roughly 65 billion barrels — a fraction of Venezuela's total 303 billion barrels, the largest proven reserves of any country on Earth, though most of it is heavy crude that is costly to extract and refine. Under the structure described by a White House official, the new private joint venture grants the United States 55% of effective output, with the government's share split between direct equity and guaranteed at-cost supply. The arrangement runs for 100 years and is projected to draw $100 billion in fresh investment into Venezuela's battered oil sector while generating an estimated $209 billion in tax revenue for Caracas over time, figures reported by the BBC.
The scale is notable given how recently the country's oil industry was considered radioactive to Western capital. Exxon Mobil's chief executive once dismissed Venezuela as simply "un-investable," a judgment rooted in decades of nationalization, sanctions and crumbling infrastructure under the Maduro government and its predecessors.
From military operation to boardroom deal
The agreement is the latest chapter in a rapid transformation of US-Venezuela relations. Nine months ago, American forces carried out an operation that removed Maduro from power and brought him to the United States, where he now faces federal narcoterrorism and drug-trafficking charges in a New York courtroom; he has pleaded not guilty. Rodríguez, his former vice president, assumed the country's leadership in the aftermath and has since pushed to reopen Venezuela's oil sector to foreign capital, using her first state-of-the-union address to press lawmakers toward reforms that would secure access for outside firms.
That pivot has not gone unchallenged inside Venezuela. Hardliners within the governing apparatus have accused Rodríguez of "treason" over her outreach to Washington, framing the oil deal as capitulation to the same foreign ambitions the Chavista movement was built to resist, according to reporting from Latin Times. Rodríguez herself has sent mixed signals, at one point publicly bristling at what she called Washington's continued "orders over politicians in Venezuela" even as her government finalized the agreement.
This deal is a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio
For the Trump administration, the timing carries its own domestic logic. Average US gas prices have climbed to $4.09 a gallon, up from $3.21 a year ago, as the six-month war between the United States, Israel and Iran has scrambled global crude markets and driven the Strategic Petroleum Reserve below 300 million barrels — near historic lows. Securing a new, non-Middle Eastern source of crude gives the White House a talking point heading into the November midterms, even if the practical effect on pump prices will take years to materialize.
Energy analysts caution that Venezuela's oil infrastructure, degraded by two decades of underinvestment and sanctions, cannot simply flip back on. Rebuilding the pipelines, refineries and export terminals needed to move new volumes at scale is expected to require years and billions of dollars in additional spending, meaning the barrels promised in Friday's announcement are unlikely to reach American refineries anytime soon. Oil produced under the arrangement is expected to be split between the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and US military needs.
What happens next depends heavily on how quickly American companies are willing to commit capital to a country whose politics remain unsettled, and on whether Rodríguez can hold together a coalition that includes both US-aligned technocrats and Chavista loyalists newly uneasy about ceding control of the nation's signature resource.
