September 1, 2026 | US President Donald Trump is pushing deeper into Venezuela’s oil industry under a new agreement with Caracas. Reports say a US-linked joint venture would receive drilling rights across 17 fields containing 65 billion barrels of confirmed reserves. The US could also buy 20% of production at cost and receive first refusal over the remainder.
Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez describes the project as an investment that will create jobs, production. and government revenue. But the arrangement could significantly expand Washington’s influence over Venezuela’s biggest asset and put existing Chinese and Russian oil interests in the country under pressure.
September 1, 2026 | The U.S. has struck a deal to take majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela's oil reserves, nine months after the U.S. military abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in a raid on Caracas and two months after The New York Times revealed that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has become the de facto viceroy of Venezuela, effectively controlling Venezuela's finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government. The new oil deal gives the Department of Defense a 35% stake in a joint U.S.-Venezuelan private company that now holds 100-year leases to 17 oil fields. It also gives the U.S. the right to buy some of the oil produced at cost — a major triumph for the Trump administration as the war on Iran depletes the United States' strategic oil reserves. Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodríguez claims U.S. investment in Venezuela's oil industry will jumpstart the country's floundering economy, but critics, including Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez, say the deal is not only "unfavorable to Venezuela" but also appears to violate the Venezuelan Constitution.
"The whole history around this is extremely shady," adds Rodríguez, who previously led Venezuela's Congressional Budget Office and now teaches at the University of Denver. "It's clear that this is not a deal that any Venezuelan government would have entered into unless this country had been subject to an invasion, and unless its authorities had been held at gunpoint. So, I think we've replaced gunboat diplomacy now for gunpoint diplomacy."
