Venezuela details 25-year oil deal with U.S.

President Donald Trump was captured during a strike that led to his removal in January — Venezuela's interim government, under Delcy Rodríguez, has now laid out the fine print of what the White House is calling "the biggest oil deal in world history": a 25-year agreement handing the United States sweeping access to some of the largest untapped crude reserves on Earth.

Rodríguez detailed the arrangement, which covers 17 strategic oil fields and targets more than 1.5 million barrels per day in production, with eight new greenfield blocks slated for development in the Orinoco Belt, according to Reuters. The interim president projected the deal could generate roughly $209.3 billion in state revenue for Venezuela over the life of the agreement, assuming a $65-per-barrel oil price, with minimum 16% royalties and a 34% income tax rate applied to the new greenfield projects. Rodríguez's government said the deal involves the development of 17 fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels and could draw $100 billion in investment into Venezuela's oil industry and yield over $209 billion in taxes for Caracas.

Trump announced the deal in dramatic fashion on Truth Social, declaring "BREAKING NEWS: The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!" He credited Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth for negotiating alongside Rodríguez, and said the pact would secure "majority U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer." The president added that the transaction "MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves."

Rubio, for his part, framed the agreement as a mutual win, saying it would bring "nearly $100 billion in private investment, support thousands of high-paying jobs, and drive the reconstruction of Venezuela's economy." According to Axios, the unorthodox structure amounts to a "public-private partnership" between the U.S., private companies and Venezuela — not a purchase, but an equity stake, with the U.S. taking corporate ownership in the companies involved. The U.S. would also secure guaranteed "off-take oil" — crude delivered at cost — and the arrangement is reportedly being overseen by the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital, which helps finance efforts that further U.S. national defense.

Details of the corporate mechanics remain murky. ABC News reported that a U.S. official familiar with the deal said the U.S. will have a 55% share in a joint venture with a private Venezuelan company, split between equity ownership and production, creating the "second-largest private oil company by reserves in the world." That same official said the interim Venezuelan president granted the private company a 100-year lease for oil fields totaling 65 billion barrels of proven reserves. Trump himself, notably, did not disclose the corporate structure, the specific fields, or the companies involved when he first announced the pact.

The deal caps a stunning reversal of fortune for Venezuela's oil sector, which for years languished under socialist mismanagement and international sanctions. Venezuela holds the world's largest proven oil reserves but has produced only a fraction of its potential after years of underinvestment, mismanagement and sanctions. The agreement follows the U.S. operation in January that led to the ouster of strongman Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela's then-president, whose government was toppled after Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured. Conservatives have long argued that removing the Maduro regime was a necessary precondition for unlocking Venezuela's energy potential for American benefit rather than for Havana, Moscow, and Beijing's client state.

The timing is no accident. The deal comes as the war with Iran continues to roil the global crude trade, and Trump faces pressure ahead of the midterms as gas prices have spiked because of the six-month-old war with Iran. Rubio said the deal demonstrates "how President Trump's bold foreign policy is driving America First wins: securing stable reserves and low-cost oil in our Hemisphere and lowering gas prices here at home."

Skeptics caution that turning paper barrels into pumped crude will take years, and market watchers have previously voiced doubt that American firms would commit fully given Caracas's history of asset seizures. Still, the scale of the reported reserves — and Washington's newly minted equity stake — marks one of the most consequential energy realignments in the Western Hemisphere in decades.

Why it matters: If the deal delivers as advertised, it would mark a historic pivot away from OPEC and hostile petro-states toward American-secured Western Hemisphere energy dominance — precisely the kind of hardball, results-driven diplomacy the Trump administration has staked its foreign policy legacy on, especially amid an oil-rattling war with Iran.