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Venezuela oil deal details in flux after Trump touts reserve control
Caracas said the agreement spans 25 years across 17 fields with a target of 1.5 million barrels per day, but reported U.S. ownership stakes and the contract text remain unclear.
Oil traders are looking past President Trump’s framing of a Venezuela oil deal as the “biggest oil deal in world history,” after later reporting raised questions about key terms and the underlying ownership structure, according to OilPrice.
Trump announced the arrangement on Friday, saying Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth negotiated with Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez to secure majority U.S. control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves. Rodriguez called it historic in a televised address Saturday, describing a 25-year agreement covering 17 oilfields with a production target of 1.5 million barrels a day, but neither side has released the agreement text.
OilPrice reports that a Pentagon spokesman contradicted a reported ownership structure. It also says the company positioned to run the fields changed hands under murky circumstances just weeks before the deal was announced.
Brent crude rose more than 2% Monday morning due to a separate U.S. move involving Iranian rocket launchers near the Strait of Hormuz, while the deal’s commercial details continued to shift in the background. OilPrice notes that an earlier PBS account described a 55% effective interest in a newly formed private company and a right to buy oil at cost for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, while later Wall Street Journal reporting described a 35% passive stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, a firm already pumping around 20.
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