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

President Donald Trump said on Friday night that the United States had taken majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan proven reserves through a deal with interim president Delcy Rodríguez and a private joint venture. He called it “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” and said it would come “at no cost to the American Taxpayer.”

A White House official told CNN the structure gives the United States “55 percent effective output” of a new private company that would rank as the second-largest private oil firm by reserves. Rodríguez, the official said, granted the company 100-year concessions. The U.S. share is split between equity and guaranteed at-cost off-take. As production rises, the official said, barrels are meant to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and supply the U.S. military.

Trump named Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as the American negotiators. He said the transaction “MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves” and would “substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future.” The White House did not release the contract, name the private operator, or publish a field-by-field list.

The timing is not accidental. The Iran war is six months old. The SPR fell below 300 million barrels in early August, more than 100 million barrels below the level at the start of 2026 and a four-decade low, after Washington drew down stocks to cover supply lost in the Gulf. Petrol prices have been a political problem for the midterms. Venezuela, by the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s count, holds about 303 billion barrels of proven crude, roughly 17 percent of the world total and the largest national figure on the EIA sheet.

The fields in the talks are a slice of that total. Axios, writing on Thursday before the announcement, said officials were discussing more than a dozen producing fields with about 90 billion barrels proved, some of them once held by Venezuelan insiders later indicted and by Chinese interests. Trump’s 65 billion barrel figure sits inside that range. The Washington Post reported that as many as 17 fields could be involved and that many lack working kit. Building it out would cost billions.

That cost is the hole in the “no cost to the taxpayer” line. In January, after U.S. forces seized Nicolás Maduro and flew him to the United States on narcoterrorism charges, Trump told NBC News that “a tremendous amount of money will have to be spent” and that oil companies would spend it “and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.” He had earlier floated a $100 billion rebuild figure. Friday’s statement does not reconcile those two sentences.

Production is the other constraint. Years of underinvestment, sanctions and political chaos cut Venezuelan output far below the reserve base. Heavy crude from the Orinoco Belt needs upgraders. Amuay and Cardón, the Paraguaná complex that once refined about 940,000 barrels a day, have run well below nameplate for years. A paper claim on 65 billion barrels does not put diesel in a Florida tank next week.

Rodríguez has not held an election. Trump said earlier this year that Venezuela was “not ready yet” for a vote. The deal, if it holds, locks a U.S. commercial position into whatever government follows her. It also puts American firms and, if the official’s description is accurate, a U.S. government equity slice inside a country Washington still treats as a security problem.

Gas prices will move on whether those fields actually flow and how fast the SPR is refilled. The document the public has not seen will decide who pays for the pipe, the upgraders and the security. Until that text is out, the 65 billion barrel number is a political claim sitting on a geological fact: the oil is there, the kit is not, and the reserve that was supposed to cover a Gulf war is already thin.