Trump says the U.S. takes majority control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil

President Donald Trump said on Friday that the United States had secured majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven Venezuelan crude, a slice he described as the largest oil transaction in history and a route to cheaper petrol at home. Interim president Delcy Rodríguez welcomed the same arrangement and put numbers on it that Washington had not: 17 strategic fields, about $100 billion of private capital, and $209 billion of expected tax revenue for the Venezuelan treasury.

The announcement arrived on Truth Social after weeks of talks that Reuters, Axios and the Wall Street Journal had already sketched. Trump named Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth as the American negotiators and said the deal came “through a partnership with private business” at no cost to the U.S. taxpayer. He claimed the transaction more than doubles American oil reserves. That claim treats the Venezuelan barrels as if they sit on the U.S. books. They do not, unless title, offtake and booking rules are rewritten in the still unpublished contracts.

A White House official told CNN the structure is a new private joint venture in which the United States would hold “55 percent effective output,” including an ownership stake and a right to buy crude at cost. Rodríguez, the official said, granted 100-year concessions on the fields with U.S. support. Axios, citing a government source, added that the arrangement is not a purchase of reserves. The United States would take equity and a guaranteed offtake volume. Oversight would sit with the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, a unit built to finance projects that Washington treats as national defence.

Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven crude stock, about 303 billion barrels on the Energy Information Administration’s count, more than Saudi Arabia. Production has collapsed from its late-1990s peak. Wells in Lake Maracaibo and the Orinoco Belt sit idle behind rusted pipelines, unpaid crews and years of underinvestment. Trump asked American firms earlier this year to put at least $100 billion into the sector after U.S. forces seized Nicolás Maduro in January and flew him to face federal charges. Rodríguez has run the government since.

Rubio called the pact a win for both countries. For the United States, he said, it would lock in stable, low-cost supply and help pull down gasoline prices that have stayed high while the Iran war has kept Hormuz traffic disrupted. For Venezuela, he repeated the $100 billion investment figure and promised thousands of high-paying jobs. Neither he nor Trump named the companies, the field list, the royalty schedule, the environmental liabilities, or the court that would hear a dispute.

That silence matters. Extra-heavy Orinoco crude needs upgraders and diluent. Maracaibo infrastructure leaks. Courts in Caracas and New York already hold competing claims on PDVSA assets. A 100-year concession written after a sitting president was removed by a foreign military will be tested by later Venezuelan governments and by investors who want title they can finance. Reuters noted legal and infrastructure obstacles in the same breath as the announcement.

The 65 billion barrel figure is about one fifth of the country’s proven stock. Earlier week reporting had spoken of talks over more than a dozen fields holding as much as 90 billion barrels. Friday’s public number is smaller. It is still large enough, if the barrels can be lifted, to rearrange Atlantic Basin flows and to give U.S. refiners a heavy-sour stream they have been short of since sanctions and the Iran war tightened the market.

Opposition figures in Caracas had already called the talks predatory when the outlines leaked. They argued that a government installed after Maduro’s capture lacks the mandate to lock fields for a century. The administration’s reply is that production is the only path to reconstruction and that American firms are the only operators with capital at this scale. Neither side has published a cash-flow model that shows how $209 billion of tax arrives, over what years, and at what oil price.

Petrol prices in the United States will not move on a press statement. New barrels from Venezuela take years of work on wells, upgraders and ports. The immediate effect is political. Trump can point to a signed outline before the autumn. Rodríguez can point to promised cash. The test is whether a named operator puts the first dollar into a named field before those promises age.