President Donald Trump said on Friday the United States has entered into an agreement with Venezuela granting it majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of the South American nation’s proven oil reserves, a deal he described as “the biggest oil deal in world history.”
Trump made the announcement in a social media post, saying the agreement was negotiated at his direction by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, working with Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, together with unspecified private business partners. He said the arrangement comes at no cost to U.S. taxpayers and would more than double America’s oil reserves.
Secretary of State Rubio separately called the deal a major win for both countries, saying it would secure stable, low-cost oil supplies for the Western Hemisphere and bring close to $100 billion in private investment into Venezuela’s economy, along with thousands of jobs.
The agreement follows a January U.S. military operation that captured then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who now faces narcoterrorism and drug-trafficking charges in the United States. Trump has since pressed American oil companies to return to Venezuela, arguing the country’s reserves — estimated at roughly 303 billion barrels, about 17% of global supply — were unjustly nationalized decades ago under Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez.
The announcement comes as Trump faces political pressure over high gasoline prices, which have climbed sharply amid a six-month-old U.S.-Israel war against Iran that has disrupted tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The average U.S. gas price stood at about $4.09 a gallon on Friday, up roughly 27% from a year earlier, according to AAA. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to its lowest level since the 1980s.
The White House did not immediately provide details on the private-sector partners involved or how the arrangement would be implemented. Analysts have noted that persuading major oil companies to resume large-scale operations in Venezuela could be complicated by years of infrastructure decay and regional instability.
