Trump’s Oil Deal Is a Return to Venezuela’s Colonial Past
Donald Trump’s backroom deal with Venezuela’s leaders formally gives the US control over the country’s oil. It marks the definitive end of modern Venezuela’s social contract, in which oil production was meant to serve national economic goals.
Venezuela’s resource nationalist consensus was built over decades through broad, cross-ideological political movements. US plundering of its oil will likely only strengthen that consensus. (Julio Urribarri / Anadolu via Getty Images)
On Friday evening, US President Donald Trump announced — via Truth Social post — the “biggest oil deal in world history,” which would see the United States take partial control of a shocking sixty-five billion barrels of Venezuelan oil, more than doubling the United States’ current reserves.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated the deal with interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, hailed the agreement as “a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people,” dangling the scintillating prospect of “nearly $100 billion in private investment” for Venezuela and the creation of “thousands of high-paying jobs.”
Details of the deal were already leaking Thursday afternoon, with sources suggesting that it would take the form of a one hundred-year lease across seventeen oil fields — including undeveloped heavy crude sites in the Orinoco Belt as well as developed light crude sites in Lake Maracaibo. The deal was also announced amid rumors that Venezuela may be leaving the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
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