Trump Says US Reaches Deal to Take Majority Control of Venezuelas 65 Billion Barrels of Oil Reserves

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States has entered a sweeping agreement with Venezuela that, if fully realized, would give the U.S. majority control over a joint venture holding rights to more than 65 billion barrels of the South American country’s proven oil reserves.

Trump announced the deal in a post on Truth Social, calling it “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY.” He said the agreement was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, and claimed it was secured at no cost to American taxpayers while more than doubling total U.S. oil reserves.

Under the terms described by a U.S. official who spoke to NBC’s MS NOW, the arrangement gives the United States an effective 55% share of output from a newly formed private joint venture. That stake would be split between direct equity in the venture’s holding company and rights to purchase Venezuelan crude oil at cost, rather than at market price. Rodriguez’s government has granted the venture 100-year concessions covering oil fields containing the reserves in question, according to the same official.

If the venture proceeds as described, it would become the world’s second-largest privately held holder of proven oil reserves, trailing only Saudi Arabia’s state-owned Saudi Aramco, according to U.S. officials cited by multiple news organizations covering the announcement. Venezuela holds roughly 303 billion barrels of proven crude reserves in total, the largest in the world and about 17% of global reserves, according to figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, though much of that oil is heavy crude requiring substantial investment and specialized infrastructure to extract and refine. The country is currently producing more than 1 million barrels of crude per day.

Secretary of State Rubio described the agreement as a “huge win” for both countries, according to comments reported by MS NOW, as the Trump administration continues efforts to revive Venezuela’s badly deteriorated energy sector and secure additional crude supplies for U.S. refineries. Venezuela’s government press office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the announcement, according to reporting from the Washington Times.

The deal comes nearly nine months after U.S. forces, acting on Trump’s direction, carried out an operation to capture Venezuela’s longtime president, Nicolas Maduro, and bring him to the United States to face federal narcoterrorism and drug trafficking charges. Since Maduro’s removal, Washington has pursued a broader strategy of encouraging American investment in Venezuela’s energy industry while working to secure Venezuelan crude for domestic refineries, part of a wider effort to reshape the country’s economic relationships following the collapse of its former government.

The announcement also arrives as Trump faces mounting political pressure over high domestic gasoline prices, driven in significant part by disruptions to global oil markets stemming from the ongoing war between the United States, Israel and Iran, which reached its six-month mark this week with no resolution in sight. The average price of gasoline in the United States stood at about 4.09 dollars per gallon Friday, according to AAA, compared with roughly 3.21 dollars a year earlier. The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell below 300 million barrels in early August, a decline of more than 100 million barrels since the start of the year, as the government has drawn down stockpiles amid the disruption. The conflict has severely constrained oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that normally carried roughly one-fifth of the world’s petroleum supply before fighting began in late February.

Friday’s announcement follows an earlier, more limited arrangement disclosed in January, when Trump said Venezuela’s interim government would turn over between 30 million and 50 million barrels of oil to the United States to be sold at market price, with proceeds directed toward benefiting both countries. At the time, that agreement had not been formalized into a concrete deal, according to contemporaneous reporting, underscoring how the relationship between Washington and Caracas’s new leadership has continued to evolve over the months since Maduro’s removal.

The scale of Friday’s announced agreement, covering tens of billions of barrels of proven reserves rather than a fixed shipment, represents a significant escalation from that earlier arrangement and would mark one of the most consequential shifts in global oil market control in recent memory if the venture is implemented as described. Analysts and industry observers are likely to scrutinize the deal’s specific legal structure, financing arrangements and long-term feasibility in the coming days, particularly given the technical and infrastructure challenges historically associated with extracting and processing Venezuela’s heavy crude reserves.