Trump Announces 'Biggest Oil Deal in History' With Venezuela
President Trump announced a deal giving the United States control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil — a 55 per cent government stake in a joint venture, under a 100-year concession covering seventeen strategic fields granted by interim president Delcy Rodríguez. He claimed it “more than doubles American oil reserves” and would lower petrol prices; Caracas says it brings over $100bn of investment. The official text has not been released.
Strip the superlatives and the structure is remarkable enough: the American government itself — not its oil majors — taking majority ownership of another nation’s subsoil for a century, negotiated with an interim administration installed after US forces seized the elected-ish president in January. It goes beyond anything attempted in post-2003 Iraq, and the unpublished text will be scrutinised for what Venezuela actually receives beyond survival. The strategic logic runs through Hormuz: with Iranian oil bottled up, Venezuelan crude re-anchors American supply and prices before the midterms. The opposition calls it predatory; a future Venezuelan government may call it void. Watch the text when it surfaces, the legal challenges — and whether petrol prices actually move.