What we know about Trump's deal giving US access to vast oil reserves in Venezuela

Oil What we know about Trump's deal giving US access to vast oil reserves in Venezuela Trump is calling it the biggest oil deal ever.

He's calling it the biggest oil deal ever. WPVI Besides a social media post from President Donald Trump , the White House has said little about what he is calling “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” in Venezuela .

Trump said the agreement announced Friday night would give the United States a stake in Venezuela’s vast oil reserves , a step toward his goal of extracting energy from the country after American forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro in a middle-of-the-night raid in January and brought him to New York to face federal drug trafficking charges .

Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez , described the deal as a step toward economic recovery that will modernize the country’s oil industry. In a televised address to the nation late Saturday, Rodríguez insisted Venezuela's sovereignty is secure and said she wants the country to become a global energy powerhouse.

Earlier on Saturday, she said the oil reserves would “cease to be an inert, cold statistic and will instead become concrete solutions. Housing is one of them.”

But the answers to many questions, including how soon the reserves could be drilled and who will pay to make it happen, were not immediately clear. No text of any agreement has been released.

The U.S. government and an unnamed private operator in Venezuela formed a new company that was given the rights to untapped oil fields for 100 years.

The administration appears to be trying to find ways to make it easier for the private sector to invest in Venezuela’s industry through the deal, said Bob McNally, who was an energy adviser in former President George W. Bush’s White House. “However, investors will remain cautious even if the terms of the deal, once released, pass legal muster. A future president could withdraw, and Caracas has twice thrown foreign investors out,” McNally said.

A statement from Rodríguez said the deal involves the development of 17 fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels. It said the agreement could draw $100 billion in investment into Venezuela’s oil industry and yield over $209 billion in taxes for Caracas.

Trump said the agreement was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Rodríguez.

The deal gives the United States 55% effective output of the new private company, including an ownership stake and rights to buy oil at cost. American purchases of the oil will go toward the U.S. strategic oil reserves along with the military, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The company would be the second largest corporate holder of proven reserves after Saudi Aramco, according to the official.

Amos Hochstein, who was a senior energy adviser to former President Joe Biden, said the deal is uncharted territory from a legal and diplomatic perspective. It carries tremendous risk for companies thinking about doing business under the new arrangement, he said. Democrats could challenge the deal if they regain power in Washington, as could future administrations in Venezuela.

“There will be a lot of challenges to what was just announced,” Hochstein said. “I can only say, if it were me, I’d be nervous. And if I’m back in my old job in the next administration, then they should be nervous.”

Trump says the deal will help lower gas prices for Americans. That is an important objective for the Republican president as the Iran war slows the shipping of Persian Gulf oil and keeps prices elevated months before November elections in the United States.

But experts have repeatedly warned that Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure will take years and billions of dollars to repair. A substantial boost in production is not expected to happen quickly.

The deal could be “helpful in the long run, but it’s not going to do anything to change the price of gasoline at the retail station for Labor Day weekend,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University.

Neither side made clear who would pay for infrastructure investments and at what cost.

For now, the war with Iran is having more impact on gas prices than the agreement with Venezuela. Oil prices rose Sunday after the U.S. attacked Iranian rocket launchers on the Strait of Hormuz. The price for a barrel of U.S. oil was up 1.8% to $84.94.

The average price of gas in the U.S. was $4.08 per gallon on Sunday, according to AAA. That was up from $3.19 a year ago.

Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, said the oil industry is awaiting clarity on the deal's details. Venezuela has room to increase its oil production, he said — in the past it produced more than 2.5 million barrels a day above current levels — but investments of this scale don't happen quickly.

“It’s going to take time — many years — to deploy that much capital and produce the kind of incremental results that history suggests possible," Book said.

Some in Venezuela considered it a betrayal of what their government has stated repeatedly for decades: Venezuelan resources are for Venezuela, and leaders would not allow the U.S. government access to those resources.

At a market in eastern Caracas on Saturday, Douglas Borjas said he was upset about the announcement.

“I think they’re doing it to cling to power,” he said of Venezuela’s leaders. “It’s like, ‘I’m giving you a vast amount of petroleum as long as you leave me alone here in power.’”

He added: “The Venezuelan people deserve better. Venezuela has resources that can be exploited, but for the benefit of the people, not for the benefit of the corrupt elite.”

Harvard University professor Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan planning minister, called it a “shameful deal."

“Venezuelans will not respect this illegitimate deal and no ma...