Trump’s Venezuelan Prize: 65 Billion Barrels, 100 Years and 55 Percent of Oil Flow

The main monument to the new school of reparations appears to be Venezuela. Only recently, the country dominated the headlines: the American military operation, the capture of Nicolás Maduro, his removal to the United States, an interim government headed by Delcy Rodríguez, and Donald Trump’s statements about the country’s new future. Then attention shifted to Iran, the Strait of Hormuz and yet another major war. Venezuela was almost forgotten. Meanwhile, it was there, quietly, that perhaps the most interesting thing was happening: the price of the American victory was being determined. Or, more precisely, how much does Venezuela owe Trump for its new happy future under US patronage?

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org by Jonathan Alvarez S, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Flag of Venezuela

Read Part I of the series: How Trump Is Turning Wars and Settlements Into Business Deals

After Venezuelan President Maduro was captured, Washington invited American oil companies to return to Venezuela and restore production. And then a small problem emerged. Business failed to display the expected patriotic enthusiasm. ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods effectively described Venezuela as “uninvestable.” And it was easy to understand the oil executives. They remembered perfectly well the nationalizations under Hugo Chávez, the lost assets, years of arbitration, devastated infrastructure and, above all, the possibility that the political wind could change again in a few years and another government could declare all previous agreements criminal. The oil was there. A great deal of it. But turning it into money would require years and billions of dollars. There were no guarantees that investors would ever see those billions again. None whatsoever. And apparently, it was not only the oil executives who understood that.

Trump’s New Rules

Trump then made his usual “knight’s move.” First, Venezuela’s new leadership was given a very clear explanation of the rules for the next stage of the game. The US president did not bother with much diplomatic circumlocution. Delcy Rodríguez was publicly warned that if she “didn’t do the right thing,” she would have to pay a “very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

At the same time, Trump demanded what amounted to “full access” from the country’s new leadership, while the White House did not rule out a second military operation if Caracas happened to misunderstand the first lesson. Translated from the language of high politics into ordinary business language: one president was already sitting in an American prison, and everyone else who did not want to join him was invited to study the terms of the new investment climate carefully.

After this unobtrusive explanation of the advantages of the free market, Venezuela did indeed begin creating guarantees for American investors. On January 29, 2026, interim President Delcy Rodríguez signed an oil-sector reform that the National Assembly had approved literally just hours earlier. For the first time in roughly two decades, private companies were allowed to independently manage oil production and sales. The previous monopoly status of state-owned PDVSA was effectively dismantled, independent arbitration became possible, and the executive branch gained greater flexibility in setting royalty rates.

Formally, ownership of the subsoil remained with the state. In practice, however, private capital was given a clear path to what Chávez had once declared a national asset and the foundation of Venezuelan socialism. It was a remarkable speed of ideological evolution: at the beginning of January, the Americans “took” Maduro, and by the end of the month, Venezuelan lawmakers had already developed a much better understanding of the needs of foreign investors.

The Law Is Fine, But What About Guarantees?

But even the new law was not enough. Global business has learned one simple truth too well: a law is a good thing, but it is not eternal. Today, one government announces a course toward privatization and invites foreign capital; tomorrow, another comes to power, already under the slogans of protecting national interests, and revises old contracts, changes taxes, licenses and ownership rules. The day after that, everything turns in the opposite direction again. Oil companies know this especially well. They have spent decades operating in countries where the political cycle can sometimes be shorter than the payback period for a single well.

That is why investors needed not merely a new law, but a structure that would make it as difficult as possible for the next government to reverse. Preferably, it would be long-term, international, financially tied to the American side and backed not only by Caracas’s signature. A law can be rewritten. A decades-long contract embedded in an international structure, backed by American capital and political protection, is much more painful to change.

And here Trump’s answer proved worthy of a man who had spent his entire life in real estate: if a client is afraid that tomorrow he will be asked to vacate the premises, the contract should be structured so that tomorrow arrives a very long time from now.

For example, in a hundred years.

Another Deal of the Century

On August 28, Trump announced what he himself called “the largest oil deal in the history of the world.” And this time, Trump’s customary love of superlatives does not look entirely like advertising exaggeration. The deal concerns 17 Venezuelan oil fields with a proven potential of more than 65 billion barrels, whose development rights are to be granted to a new structure involving the US government and a private operator that has not yet been named. Venezuela’s total proven oil reserves are estimated at approximately 303 billion barrels. In other words, the new structure covers about one-fifth of the country’s total proven reserves.

We can breathe easy. Just one-fifth.

It is worth understanding what that “one-fifth” means in ordinary numbers. In 2025, the United States, the world’s largest oil producer, produced a record average of 13.6 million barrels of crude oil per day. Over a year, that amounts to roughly 5 billion barrels. Thus, 65 billion barrels represent about thirteen years of current US crude oil production. Meanwhile, total US consumption of oil and petroleum products in 2025 amounted to approximately 7.52 billion barrels for the year.

In other words, the Venezuelan package is equivalent to roughly eight and a half years of all current US oil consumption. Naturally, those 65 billion barrels cannot be pumped out tomorrow morning, and a significant portion consists of heavy crude requiring expensive production and refining. But the scale of the prize becomes somewhat clearer. This is not just another oil field. It is a state-scale oil asset.

And there is another figure after which the phrase “largest deal” starts to look less like advertising. According to a US official, the new company will become the world’s second-largest corporate oil structure by controlled proven reserves, behind Saudi Aramco. In other words, only a few months ago, American oil companies were explaining to Trump that Venezuela was too risky for investment. Now they are being invited to enter not merely as foreign investors, but under the umbrella of a structure whose reserves would rank second only to Saudi Arabia’s oil giant. Apparently, risk can be treated. Sometimes all it takes is aircraft carriers, a new law and a 100-year contract.

Reparations Spread Over a Century

From there, everything followed a familiar pattern of extracting ownership — only the terminology has become considerably more respectable over the centuries. Once, this was called reparations. Later, nationalization in reverse. In less polite circles, it might be called racketeering. In modern diplomacy, all of this is called investor guarantees.

A new private company involving the US government and an as-yet-unnamed operator is expected to be established. This structure will receive development rights to 17 fields for 100 years. And according to the Associated Press, the United States will receive 55% of the so-called effective output. This is where the accounting becomes particularly elegant: those 55% consist not only of the US ownership stake in the company, but also of a special US right to purchase part of the oil produced at cost. The precise proportion between ownership and preferential purchases has not yet been publicly disclosed — the full agreement itself has not yet been published.

Translated from the language of oil and law into ordinary human language, it is rather elegant. Americans do not necessarily have to formally own 55% of every barrel. Part of the barrel belongs to them through their stake in the company, while another part can be purchased at roughly the cost of production rather than the global market price. Together, that produces the aforementioned 55% effective access to output. In other words, Venezuela is graciously allowed to retain state ownership of the oil, but more than half of the economic flow is effectively built into the American structure in advance. The land can remain with its owner. The important thing is to arrange the cash register properly at the exit.

And this is what fundamentally distinguishes the deal from an ordinary concession to a foreign oil company. Some of the oil acquired by the new structure is expected to go directly into the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, while another portion will be used for the needs of the American armed forces. In other words, this is no longer simply about how much Chevron, ExxonMobil or some as-yet-unknown operator will earn. The United States is obtaining a mechanism for direct access to a vast foreign oil resource for its own strategic reserves and military.

Why Now?

It is not difficult to understand why this is happening now. The war with Iran and disruptions to supplies through the Strait of Hormuz hit the oil market, forcing Washington to draw heavily on its own reserves — the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. By early August, the US strategic oil reserve had fallen below 300 million barrels, having lost more than 100 million barrels since the beginning of 2026, and by August 21 it stood at roughly 289.7 million barrels. One might think that releasing such an amount of oil onto the market would cause gasoline prices to fall, or at least behave themselves. But not so. On August 28, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was about $4.09, compared with $3.21 a year earlier. That is an increase of roughly 27%. In other words, more than 100 million barrels of strategic reserves had been released, yet voters at the gas pump somehow felt little relief.

This produced a remarkable cycle of geopolitics: start a war in the Middle East, encounter problems with the world’s main oil shipping chokepoint, draw down a significant portion of your own strategic reserves, face expensive gasoline — and then suddenly discover salvation in the subsoil of a country whose president the US military had captured and taken to the United States only a few months earlier. And the Venezuelan fields, if we continue our somewhat harsh analogy, did not even have to be “taken” in the old-fashioned way. They are expected to be obtained in an entirely civilized manner — through an agreement with Venezuela’s new leadership. The defeated party signs the papers itself. The progress of international law is plain to see.

The most remarkable thing is that, naturally, none of this is called reparations. It is called the energy security of the United States.

The Oil Is Already Flowing

Venezuelan oil is already flowing to the United States, and in a fairly substantial stream. US Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle Hausthwait said in August that Venezuela is currently producing about 1.25 million barrels of oil per day, while more than 500,000 barrels a day are being sent to US refineries, many of which are specifically equipped to process heavy Venezuelan crude. That means more than 40% of Venezuela’s current production is already going to the United States. Hausthwait himself rounded the figure up to “about half.”

Is that a lot or a little? It depends on what you compare it with. The United States itself currently produces approximately 13.8 million barrels of oil per day. So the current Venezuelan flow represents only about 3.6% of America’s own production. For the United States as a whole, that may seem relatively small.

But for someone else, it is a great deal. To understand the scale: more than 500,000 barrels per day is roughly 70% of Poland’s total daily oil consumption, or about one-third of the consumption of France or the United Kingdom. In other words, the current Venezuelan flow to the United States is already more than a symbolic supply. It is a volume that would almost be enough to supply one of Central Europe’s largest countries with oil.

And that is only the current level. The goal of the new structure is to sharply increase production after wells, pipelines, power grids, terminals and refining capacity are restored. In other words, today’s 500,000 barrels are not the final result of the deal. They are more like a warm-up.

Billions for the People?

The most interesting part began after the deal was announced: all the interested parties immediately rushed to calculate future profits — each for its own audience.

The government of Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, said the new arrangement could bring the country more than $209 billion in tax revenues. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for his part, spoke of nearly $100 billion in future private investment in Venezuela’s oil industry. The picture looks like universal happiness: Venezuela receives $100 billion in investment and $200 billion in taxes, America gets cheap oil, corporations get fields and contracts, and the White House gets an opportunity to tell American voters that gasoline will someday become cheap again.

The only problem is one small word — “someday.”

Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is so badly degraded that production cannot be significantly increased quickly. Wells need to be restored, pipelines repaired, the power system rebuilt, equipment replaced, and roads and terminals constructed.

Experts warn that it will take years and tens of billions of dollars before those 65 billion barrels begin to have a noticeable impact on American gas pumps. But that does not mean everyone involved in the project will have to patiently wait for the result. The mere emergence of long-term guarantees, access to enormous reserves and a project of this scale provides a powerful boost to American oil businesses — service companies, contractors, equipment manufacturers, banks, insurers and investment funds.

And wherever major investments appear, the opportunity to make money almost always follows, particularly when those investments are additionally protected by Washington’s political and government guarantees. So, of course, nobody is going to wait 100 years. The oil still has to be produced, pipelines restored and infrastructure built, but the first contracts, loans, fees and profits can emerge today.

Was Victory Free?

Trump, meanwhile, insists that none of this will cost the American taxpayer anything. The formula is beautiful: oil for 100 years, a controlling interest, cheap supplies — and all for free.

But here even the American press begins to cough cautiously.

Some of the 17 fields are virtually devoid of the necessary infrastructure and proper access to transportation hubs. Where infrastructure once existed, equipment was destroyed, fell into disrepair or simply disappeared over the years. Restarting production will require billions of dollars, new roads, pipelines, electricity, equipment, security and safety systems. The Washington Post directly notes that the US government may ultimately have to invest substantial sums after all.

And here an especially interesting detail emerges. The Office of Strategic Capital — the Pentagon’s strategic capital office — is supposed to oversee and help finance the oil licenses. According to the Defense Department’s official explanation, it cannot own shares in the company, but it can provide loans, loan guarantees and technical assistance, including help structuring and financing deals. So, formally, there is no tank division stationed beside every oil well. Everything is much more civilized: a US Department of Defense financial structure appears alongside the investor.

And that really does change an investor’s perception of risk.

When a Pentagon structure helps arrange guarantees for an investment project, the phrase “government support” begins to sound somewhat more convincing than an ordinary bank letter. Of course, we do not have to call it a military “roof.” We are civilized people.

Let us put it more gently: American oil businesses will develop under a rather impressive government umbrella.

The Constitution Gets in the Way

There is, however, one small legal inconvenience. It is called the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Article 12 is fairly unequivocal: mineral and hydrocarbon deposits belong to the Republic, are part of the public domain and are inalienable. Moreover, Article 13 separately states that the national territory cannot be transferred, ceded or leased to foreign states. Of course, the right to develop a field is not the same as formally transferring ownership of the oil beneath the ground, and it is probably on such legal distinctions that the entire structure will be based. But when the issue involves 100-year rights, 65 billion barrels and a controlling American interest, the discussion becomes somewhat more interesting than an ordinary legal dispute over wording.

Former Venezuelan planning minister and Harvard professor Ricardo Hausmann has already called the agreement unconstitutional and said the interim government lacks the legitimacy to conclude a deal of such magnitude. The Washington Post writes that changes to Venezuela’s Constitution may actually be required to implement the American arrangement.

But I think this is precisely the kind of situation in which lawyers will find the necessary words. Especially if we remember that Nicolás Maduro is currently in an American prison and does not acknowledge the charges against him. Venezuela’s new leadership therefore has a very strong incentive to read American proposals carefully and find a lawful way to reconcile them with the little misunderstanding that sometimes arises between big business and the text of a constitution.

After all, constitutions are written by people, too. And people sometimes know how to write amendments.

Announce It First

Another circumstance makes the situation particularly piquant: the public still has not been shown the full legal structure of the “largest oil deal in world history.” Trump has already announced victory, the number of fields has been named, 65 billion barrels have been counted, 100 years have been specified, future investments and taxes have been distributed, yet a significant portion of the specific financial terms — and even the name of the private operator of the new company — remain unknown. The AP explicitly notes that key details have yet to be disclosed.

In other words, the largest oil deal in world history already exists politically, but is still being formalized legally.

For modern politics, however, this is almost a normal sequence.

First the Press Release. Then the Law. But Business Has Already Bought In

Business, however, understood the direction of the wind quickly. Chevron is already negotiating the transfer of all its Venezuelan joint ventures into the country’s new energy system, which should give the American company greater control over operations and the further expansion of its projects. The company’s largest Venezuelan project, Petropiar, is expanding into the neighboring Ayacucho 8 block. Another area of the Orinoco oil belt is being discussed for the expansion of another project, while Chevron, Venezuela’s Ministry of Hydrocarbons and state-owned PDVSA are considering adding another new oil zone to the portfolio.

Chevron has also already increased its stake in another Venezuelan joint venture, Petroindependencia, to 49%. In other words, American oil companies are gradually returning to the country from which nationalization policies once pushed them out, only now the terms look considerably more attractive, and behind the legal contract stands not merely a contract but the full political weight of Washington.

That really could change the country’s investment rating faster than any Moody’s presentation.

Goodbye, OPEC?

At the same time, another almost symbolic story has emerged. Venezuela is considering leaving OPEC — the organization it helped create more than six decades ago. According to Bloomberg, the issue has already been discussed with American officials. No final decision has been made, and Reuters separately emphasizes that it was unable to independently confirm the information. So it is still too early to bury Venezuela’s OPEC membership.

But the very fact that the question is being raised is highly revealing. A country that for decades was one of the symbols of oil nationalism and independent energy policy is discussing leaving the oil cartel it helped create at precisely the moment when Washington is gaining unprecedented access to its oil fields. Some American officials are already discussing the creation of a kind of Western Hemisphere oil bloc that could reduce OPEC’s influence.

A coincidence, of course. There are remarkably many of them in great-power politics.

The Word 'Reparations'

This is where the word that modern diplomacy tries to pronounce as rarely as possible comes into play — reparations.

No, Venezuela has not formally capitulated to the United States. There is no document titled “Act of Surrender.” There is no table stating how many million tons of oil the defeated party must ship to the victor every year. On the contrary, everything is presented in thoroughly modern terms: development, partnership, investment, tax revenues, restoration of the energy sector, jobs and economic prosperity.

Only the sequence of events turns out to be somewhat inconvenient.

First, the American military captures the sitting president of Venezuela and takes him to the United States. Then the new leadership radically changes oil legislation and opens the industry to private capital. A few months later, Washington announces a 100-year agreement covering 17 fields and 65 billion barrels, with the American side receiving 55% of effective output and the ability to purchase some of the oil at cost.

Of course, this can be called a coincidence of favorable investment circumstances. But the word “reparations” keeps somehow turning up on the tip of the tongue.

Peace as Business

So perhaps Donald Trump’s greatest political talent has nothing to do with whether he loves wars or genuinely dreams of peace. Something else is much more interesting: he looks at international relations roughly the way a developer looks at a valuable piece of land.

What is located here? Who owns it? How much is it worth? What kind of agreement can be signed? Who will be the operator? What share can be obtained? And most importantly — when will all of this start generating money?

From this perspective, Ukraine and its natural resources, the Armenian TRIPP route for almost a century, the Gulf’s multitrillion-dollar deals, the sudden American interest in controlling the Strait of Hormuz and, finally, Venezuela’s 65 billion barrels all become much easier to understand.

Trump really does want peace. It would simply be preferable if the peace agreement came with a business plan attached.

Everything Is Legal

That is precisely why the word “reparations” has almost disappeared from international politics. It sounds unattractive. It is much nicer to talk about reconstruction, strategic partnership, joint development, an investment fund and a route to peace and prosperity. The meaning, however, sometimes remains remarkably familiar.

In the past, the victor simply looted everything it had conquered. In the 20th century, it removed factories, equipment, patents and specialists. In the 21st century, it invites consultants, registers a joint venture and obtains a controlling stake.

And most importantly — everything is legal. Well, almost everything.

And if the defeated country’s constitution suddenly says otherwise, it still has a full hundred years ahead of it to get used to it.