US Nears 'Massive' Deal for Stake in Venezuela's Oil Fields
The United States is reportedly close to a deal securing an ownership stake or long-term access to Venezuelan oil fields holding some 90 billion barrels of proven reserves — discussed “at the highest levels” of both governments, with fields potentially auctioned to American producers. Washington has managed Venezuela’s oil sales since President Maduro’s capture in January; President Trump says more than $13bn has been collected. A crude infusion would ease fuel prices driven up by the Hormuz closure.
The two wars are converging into one energy strategy: with a fifth of the world’s oil bottled up behind Iran’s blockade, Washington is reaching for the largest proven reserves on earth — in a country whose government it decapitated seven months ago and whose oil it already administers into an audited account. As realpolitik it is coherent; cheaper petrol before the midterms is the domestic dividend, and denying Caracas’s barrels to China the strategic one. The legal and moral questions write themselves: a stake acquired under occupation-adjacent conditions will be contested in courts and chancelleries for years, and OPEC will read it as market re-engineering by other means. Watch the deal’s structure — lease, stake or tribute — and how the region reacts.