Published : 02 Sep 2026, 09:20 PM
Updated : 16 Sep 2026, 11:47 AM
A sweeping US-Venezuela oil agreement granting 100-year concessions over 17 Venezuelan oilfields has sparked questions over its terms, the country’s oil industry and the future of its vast energy wealth.
The deal, signed in Caracas on Wednesday, covers an estimated 65 billion barrels of crude, equivalent to more than a fifth of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves, BBC reports.
US President Donald Trump called it “the biggest oil deal in world history”, while interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez described the agreement as “historic”, saying it would generate $100 billion in investment and more than $200 billion in tax revenue.
Critics, however, have described the arrangement as heavily weighted in Washington’s favour, according to the British broadcaster.
“This is a terrible deal. [Rodríguez] has given away 20 percent of the national patrimony for nothing,” said Elliott Abrams, Trump’s former special representative on Venezuela and Iran.
Under the framework outlined by the White House, the US government will work alongside North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a private Venezuelan oil company described as the country’s second-largest private producer after Chevron.
The US government will also have veto power over the appointment of any member of NABEP’s board, while a majority of the board must be US citizens.
The agreement comes as Washington seeks to increase oil production outside West Asia amid higher petrol prices linked to the US war with Iran.
US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the pact was shifting the “geopolitical centre of the global energy markets” away from West Asian “choke points” towards the Western Hemisphere.
Abrams said there was a strategic logic to closer US-Venezuela cooperation given the uncertainty surrounding Gulf oil supplies, but called the terms a “kind of fever dream of what colonialism looks like”.
The White House has described the agreement as part of a return to the Monroe Doctrine, the 19th-century US policy asserting American influence in the Western Hemisphere.
Yet questions remain over how quickly Venezuela can restore its battered oil industry. Trump has said the deal could generate profits within two or three years, while energy experts say a decade may be more realistic.
Luis Pacheco of the Baker Institute at Rice University said Venezuela would need around $100 billion over eight years to return oil production to levels seen three decades ago.
“It’s important to know who will manage those resources and for what purpose,” Pacheco told BBC Mundo, also questioning whether the same people who previously mismanaged Venezuela’s oil wealth would control the new revenues.
The deal has also angered Venezuelan opponents of Rodríguez, who accuse her of continuing Nicolás Maduro’s political system. The Trump administration had previously condemned Maduro’s government as a corrupt drug cartel and deployed a major military presence around Venezuela.
Venezuelan economist Ricardo Hausmann accused Washington of choosing to work with the country’s existing rulers rather than using its influence to restore constitutional government and democracy.
The absence of an imminent election or a clear roadmap towards one has intensified those concerns.
The agreement has also caused unease among Venezuelan socialists. Although the governing Socialist Party has backed Rodríguez, some on the left see the pact as a capitulation to Washington after decades of opposing US influence.
Rafael Ramírez, a former head of state oil company PDVSA and oil minister under Hugo Chávez, said the deal “hands over [the oil] and opens the doors to a new colonialism of the United States”.
The criticism marks a striking reversal from Chávez's position. In 2008, after expropriating ExxonMobil assets in the Orinoco River Belt, Chávez declared that Venezuela had taken control of its oil resources and would never surrender that control again.
Now, his political successors have signed an opaque oil agreement with Washington and presented it as a victory for Venezuela.
