What’s behind the US deal to seize control of Venezuelan oil reserves?
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x whatsapp-stroke copylink google Add Al Jazeera on Google info US President Donald Trump waves from the stairs of Air Force One on August 27 [Luis M Alvarez/AP Photo] By Al Jazeera Staff Published On 29 Aug 2026 29 Aug 2026 The United States has announced that it has secured control of a substantial portion of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, after President Donald Trump pledged to “take back” the South American country’s energy resources.
On Friday, Trump announced that his government and that of Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez had reached a deal to give the US majority control over more than 65 billion barrels’ worth of proven oil reserves.
Details remain unclear. But the deal will involve 17 strategic oil fields in Venezuela. The US government has said it will partner with a private business to extract the fuel.
“The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” Trump wrote in a social media post celebrating the announcement.
What has been said so far, and what could the new deal mean for US-Venezuela relations? We answer those questions and more in this explainer.
The deal reportedly involves 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves.
That amounts to roughly a fifth of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves. As of 2023, the US government estimates that Venezuela has 303 billion barrels of oil reserves, the largest known deposit in the world.
Approximately 17 percent of the world’s oil supply is estimated to be in the South American country.
But some analysts have questioned the 65-billion-barrel total Trump announced. With no fixed terms released, there has been speculation that Trump may have made a splashy announcement to help jumpstart the US economy.
“The 65 billion barrel number is a red herring and will have little relevance to any actual deals — the real relevant details of which are still almost entirely unknown,” oil market researcher Rory Johnston said in a social media post.
“It’s just a classic big number that Trump was sure to jump all over and will repeat ad nauseam going forward.”
Trump has said that the deal “MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves”.
Government estimates indicate that proven US oil reserves are declining, standing at approximately 46 billion barrels by the end of 2024.
The US government also operates a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an emergency supply of oil to help ensure steady domestic supplies.
But the emergency stockpile is shrinking, with only 289.7 million barrels in storage facilities designed to hold up to 714 million barrels. Trump has indicated that Friday’s deal will help restore the US oil reserves, which have hit their lowest levels since 1982.
The year 2026 has seen dramatic changes for Venezuela and its relationship with the US.
Since 2013, the South American country had been led by socialist President Nicolas Maduro, whose tenure had been defined by a series of disputed elections and crackdowns on political dissent.
Trump and Maduro had repeatedly clashed, with Trump accusing the Venezuelan leader of sending drug-traffickers into the US, and Maduro accusing Trump of foreign interference in domestic politics.
Their conflict came to a head on January 3. For weeks, US military vessels had been amassing off the shore of Venezuela, and during the early morning hours, Trump authorised an operation to abduct and imprison the Venezuelan leader.
Maduro now awaits trial on drug- and weapons-related charges in New York.
In the aftermath of the attack, Trump backed Maduro’s former vice president, Rodriguez, to lead the government in Caracas. She was sworn in shortly afterwards.
The Trump administration also announced that Washington would take control of Venezuela’s oil exports “indefinitely”.
Critics have pointed out that the Trump administration has pressured Rodriguez to comply with its demands. “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told The Atlantic magazine in January.
Experts have denounced US intervention in Venezuela as illegal under international law.
But the Trump administration has made the claim to Venezuelan oil resources a key pillar in its involvement in the South American country.
In the lead-up to the January 3 attack, Trump and his allies advanced an argument that Venezuela’s oil supplies belonged to the US, due to a history of early fuel exploration in the country.
They also denounced the Venezuelan government’s efforts to expropriate oil resources from private companies, as part of an effort to nationalise the fossil fuel industry.
In December, Trump announced a blockade around Venezuela to prevent the sale of oil, its largest export. As justification, he accused Venezuela of having “stolen oil fields” from the US.
His adviser, Stephen Miller, separately called the nationalisation of Venezuela’s oil industry “the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property”.
International law, however, gives countries “permanent sovereignty” over their resources, to protect them from unwanted foreign exploitation.
Friday marked the six-month anniversary of the…
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