Caracas Hands Over Nation’s Patrimony for Next Century
By Yvonne Hayes
“BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY,” US president Donald Trump shouted from his X account on August 28, 2026. Touting the US acquisition of majority control over one fifth of Venezuela’s oil reserves, he claimed the arrangement comes at “no cost to the American Taxpayer … and will substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future.”
US secretary of state Marco Rubio brokered the agreement, along with US secretary of war Pete Hegseth, who worked closely with “Highly Respected Interim President of Venezuela Delcy Rodríguez,” Trump wrote. Trump promised the compact would help “to continue to set Venezuela on a course toward Tremendous Success and Great Prosperity.”
Under the agreement, 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves — currently in 17 prime oil fields — are essentially transferred to US control for the next 100 years. A partnership between the US government and Alejandro Betancourt, owner of North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) — will grant the Pentagon a 35 percent stake in the company. In addition, the US state department will be able to purchase 20 percent of NABEP’s production at cost and will have right of first refusal for the remaining 80 percent.
NEWS ANALYSIS
This last aspect of the agreement is unusual. It essentially means the Pentagon — which will be the direct beneficiary of significant profits — is going into the oil business. The deal enables the war department to bypass congressional spending authorization — and the façade of public approval — for a chunk of its future military ventures. The state department will be just one step behind.
Washington will likewise control the company’s board of directors. The White House said the US government would have veto power over any appointments to that board, and the majority of its members would have to be US citizens.
On the Venezuelan side, Rodríguez claims the deal will generate $200 billion in tax and royalty revenues for her country. But given the lifetime of the agreement, this only amounts to about $2 billion a year, a veritable drop in the “barrel” compared to the concessions.
Another $100 billion, Rodríguez claims, with be forthcoming in investments. But none of that will flow to the Venezuelan people to rebuild their country. These funds are simply needed to repair and build up an oil pumping infrastructure — now held privately — that is rusty and falling apart.
“The deal carries more than a whiff of imperial intervention,” wrote Bloomberg columnist Mie Dahl. Indeed, it is nothing short of highway robbery at the point of an imperial sword.
US pushes for hegemony in the Americas
Following its January 3 military assault on Caracas, and the abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, Washington seized control of Venezuela’s oil. It has maintained sanctions against the country and dictated who Venezuela can do business with, specifically banning deals with Russia, China, and Iran. These shackles on the Venezuelan oil trade are also at the heart of the US oil blockade against Cuba and US efforts to starve the Cuban people into submission.
The lies from the Trump administration and Rodríguez that the Venezuelan people —not just some portion of its monied elite — will benefit from this deal have been exposed by Washington’s track record ever since the deal was announced.
Profits from sales of Venezuelan oil now flow directly into US treasury department coffers. Only a small portion is trickling back to Caracas after approval by the US state department.
“In the first four months of the United States exerting control over Venezuela’s oil exports, almost one hundred million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight,” wrote Roxanne Vigil in a June 3 article on the Council on Foreign Affairs website. “While the Trump administration has repeatedly framed this control as benefiting both countries, it has not publicly disclosed how much Venezuelan oil it has sold, how much revenue it has collected, or how it has used those funds.”
The framework of the new deal between Washington and Caracas is equally sketchy.
Chinese share of the market
It is no accident that five of the oil production facilities to be handed over to US government agencies are currently joint ventures between Venezuela and China. In recent years, Beijing has replaced Washington as the central trading partner of many Latin American nations. This rivalry was part of what sparked the White House to release its “Donroe Doctrine”[1] last November and then put it in action during its military attack on Venezuela. Competition with China is also part of what is driving US policy in the war against Iran.
Despite the wealth underground, Venezuela carries significant debt — including at least $10 billion dollars owed to Chinese banks. US secretary of energy Chris Wright declared on September 2 that Beijing will not have any claim to revenue from new Venezuelan oil production — severing one of the channels the country had for repayment of its loans.
In recent years, Venezuela has become a less important source of energy for China. Crude from the Caribbean nation accounted for only 4% of the total oil Chinese imports in 2025. And no Venezuelan tankers are known to have arrived in China since the Trump administration assumed control of those assets following its January 3 military assault.
Thus far, the reaction from Beijing to the US threat to its stake has been measured. On September 3, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said the country’s legitimate rights and interests in Venezuela “must be protected.” He added, “Cooperation between China and Venezuela is protected by international law…. It doesn’t concern any third party.”
Chinese president Xi Jinping is due to arrive in the United States for meetings with Trump. He is likely to bring with him a large delegation of Chinese CEOs. Will there be a confrontation over Washington’s deal with Caracas, or will the two major powers choose to ignore the elephant in the room?
An enticement for US energy conglomerates
With its announcement of the deal with NABEP, the White House also aims to encourage US and other private energy conglomerates to invest in Venezuelan oil and gas production. Many had withdrawn from that market when, under former president Hugo Chávez, Caracas tightened state control over oil resources beginning in 2001. Riding a wave of mobilizations of the working class and peasantry, the Chávez government enacted legislation that threatened to cut into the profits and power of the financial oligarchy — agrarian reform, protections for working fishermen, allocation of state funds for housing and other social programs.
Chevron was the only major US company that continued operations through this period. In the wake of the Trump administration’s latest plunder, the company now intends to increase its productive capacity by 50%. US energy czar Wright was in Caracas to celebrate this decision with Rodríguez, along with the signing of the deal with NABEP.
The timing of Trump’s announcement is also not accidental in terms of domestic US politics. Polling in the United States shows increased dissatisfaction over the administration’s handling of the economy. So, the promise of relief at the gas pump and in grocery stores are designed to boost the chances at the polls this fall of politicians aligned with Trump.
But these promises are hollow. By many accounts, it will take years to rebuild the infrastructure in Venezuela to enable maximum extraction of the country’s vast reserves of crude oil.
In the meantime, US crude oil refining has averaged close to 95% capacity since the beginning of this year, above the long-term average of just under 90%. The price of oil at the pumps has nothing to do with US capacity or access to reserves. It is about the mega-profits of the oil monopolies. US working people are being ripped off by the same forces that are ripping off workers in Venezuela and bombing them in Iran.
Delcy Rodríguez: Patriot or puppet?
In February 2026, World-Outlook published Washington’s Conquest in Venezuela, challenging the claims of Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) leader Manolo de los Santos that the Delcy Rodríguez administration was primed to be the bearer of the “Bolivarian Revolution”[2] set in motion by Chávez and, allegedly, continued under Maduro. De Los Santos claimed the process unfolding in Venezuela was leading toward the establishment of “socialism in the 21st century.”
The authors of the two-part World-Outlook article argued that the signs were already clear: Just one month after the US invasion and abduction of Maduro and Flores, Rodríguez was prepared to serve as a proxy for Trump and his cronies. The passage on January 29 of a new hydrocarbons law, which granted new rights to private entities and reduced the income tax for energy projects, opened that door. During the following months, one step after another has further cleared the way for this most recent agreement, affirming the assessment of complete capitulation to Washington by the current caretaker government.
Instead of defending Venezuela’s sovereignty, as she claims, the Rodríguez administration is facilitating the robbery of the rights and resources of the Venezuelan people. Rodríguez does so while using “anti-imperialist” rhetoric and purports to continue the legacy of Simón Bolívar and the Chávez reforms. But that should not fool anyone.
The recent track record shows that the claims by Trump and Caracas that the benefits of this new arrangement will flow to the masses of Venezuelans are simply lies. The response by both governments to the devastation of the June 24 earthquake clearly demonstrated their priorities.
In the wake of that disaster — which left at least 6,500 dead, more than 225,000 injured, thousands missing, and tens of thousands homeless —US secretary of state Marco Rubio pledged a “big, fast, effective” US response. In reality, that amounted to a pitiful commitment of $150 million to faith-based aid groups and two United Nations agencies, a Disaster Assistant Response Team, and two search and rescue teams from Virginia and California that included 150 people and a dozen dogs.
At the center of this response, however, was so-called “help” from the Pentagon in getting US government staff and supplies into the country.
Washington was also likely behind the warming of relations between Caracas and Tel Aviv in recent months. That led Israel to send a small contingent of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops, members of Israeli nongovernmental organizations, and diplomatic personnel — some 30 people in total — in response to the disaster. Israeli and Venezuelan officials are emphatic that the arrival of the Israelis — with whom Venezuela had severed diplomatic relations in 2009 — was at the express invitation of Rodríguez. But all signs point to the US government increasingly calling the shots not just economically, but also politically and diplomatically in Venezuela.
Using disaster to advance US interests
In a July 24 interview with The Tempest, Venezuelan socialist Gonzalo Gómez noted that at least 15 countries had sent aid after the seismic shocks. “But the US government,” he said, “which already had a presence in Venezuela, rushed to send military personnel rather than quality aid. The US has taken advantage of the situation to advance the military occupation of Venezuela.”
Gómez also said that this was done in a framework of corruption, bureaucracy, and lack of response from the Venezuelan government.
It is in this context that Venezuelan worker Jose Luís Machena spoke about the recent oil deal during an interview with Al Jazeera, indicating it did not inspire confidence.
“This harms the country,” Machena said. “You know, they’re practically handing the country over to other countries, and that should not be happening. There was an earthquake and they did nothing. People had to pay out of their own pocket to rent machinery” to dig through the rubble.
Another sign of who Washington’s deal is really intended to benefit can be found in the man Trump calls a “champion” of the oil industry, NABEP owner Alejandro Betancourt López. The 46-year-old businessman became prominent in the 2010s “when the Venezuelan government awarded him and his partners contracts to build numerous power plants across the country even though they had no experience doing that work,” reported the August 29 New York Times, part of a “new cohort of businessmen who profited from the government so-called Bolivarian Revolution.”
Betancourt then bought into the operation of mature oil fields in Lake Maracaibo in western Venezuela, fields which became NABEP’s core.
For more than a decade, Betancourt has faced allegations of corruption. He has been the subject of investigations for money laundering and other banking crimes in Switzerland, Spain, and the United States — where Rudy Giuliani was his lawyer. He has never been charged.
NABEP, which had become the second largest private oil producer in Venezuela, was one of the firms that signed product-sharing agreements in mid-2025 under Maduro’s administration, deals designed to bypass US sanctions. Back then, NABEP was denied an operating license by the US government.
Since kidnapping Maduro in January, however, the Trump administration has been relying on Betancourt to help put together commercial ventures and partnerships in Venezuela, the New York Times reported.
“This year, State Department officials tried to pressure the Swiss government to ease up on investigations into Mr. Betancourt and asked the British government to lift travel restrictions on him,” the Times wrote. “The department also gave Mr. Betancourt a multiple-entry visa to the United States so he could meet with Trump administration officials.”
Many major capitalist news outlets have pointed to opposition within Venezuela to the oil deal, saying it comes from “both sides.” This translates as opposition from those who see the deal as a betrayal of the sovereign rights of the Venezuelan people, and those among the country’s capitalist opposition, who feel themselves being cut out of the deal and question the legitimacy of the Rodríguez government to hand over such critical assets for such a long term.
Distrust of both Washington and Caracas
What is much more difficult to discern are sentiments among the working masses in the country, although reports hint at broad dissatisfaction and distrust of both the US role and of their own government.
Al Jazeera aired one such report on August 30. “If that money goes to people, I think that’s excellent,” said one woman interviewed on the streets of Caracas. “But if on the other hand the money goes into the state coffers and stays with the state, then I don’t like it because the idea is for the money to be invested in Venezuela in schools, hospitals, roads, street lighting and rebuilding the many things destroyed by the earthquake and providing assistance to the people who lost everything. But if it goes into the pockets of those on top, I don’t agree with that.”
A man interviewed for the same clip said, “We have to wait. But to me, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what these people in the government have taken. The hospitals are destroyed. There’s no security. There’s no education. I practically earn a minimum wage. I don’t have insurance. I work in tattered shoes. Well, we’ll keep waiting.”
One theme that drives working-class opposition is the failure to move toward new presidential elections in the wake of Maduro’s kidnapping.
Talking about the US role in his country, Carlos Pérez, a 23-year-old automotive mechanics student, told the Los Angeles Times, “They tell us we have to wait two years, maybe more, while in the meantime they do business with a government that wasn’t elected, that was imposed on us, and that we don’t want.”
“We were expecting elections,” Antonio Marchetti, a 45-year-old plumber and electrician, told the same newspaper. “This pact with Trump entrenched the dictatorship that he himself declared war on. But to get rid of Maduro, he left the rest and did business with them. It disgusts me.”
In the July Tempest interview, Gómez commented on his assessment of the state of the working class and its organizations following the earthquakes but before the announcement of the Trump oil deal. “Today, social exhaustion coexists with some signs of renewed social and political organization,” Gómez remarked. “The community response shows that there is a reserve of forces that can be organized and potentially transformed into a political force, if it is articulated democratically and independently on the part of the working class.”
Whether or not this will translate into organizations that can harness the potential power of Venezuelan working people remains to be seen. But the course set by the Rodríguez administration is a surrender to the imperial power to the north.
For working people in the United States, our response should be loud and clear: “US Out of Venezuela! Return the Oil to Venezuelan Sovereignty!”
NOTES
[1] First articulated by then-president James Monroe in 1823, when nearly all Spanish colonies in the Americas had either achieved or were close to independence, the Monroe doctrine asserted that any further efforts by European powers to control or influence sovereign states in the region would be viewed as a threat to US security. It represented the seeds of a policy that could be summarized as Latin America and the Caribbean being the “backyard” of the United States — an unabashed attempt at US economic domination in the hemisphere and the mustering of military power to back that up.
“The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” — or “Donroe Doctrine” as it has been dubbed — was first asserted in the 2025 National Security Strategy document released by the White House in November 2025.
[2] The Bolivarian Revolution refers to the process of social reform in Venezuela initiated in 1998 when Hugo Chávez was first elected the country’s president. It is named after Simón Bolívar, a Venezuelan military officer who led the fight for independence from Spain in the early 1820s in the region encompassing what today is Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.
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Categories: World Politics