On the evening of August 28, 2026, Trump announced on Truth Social that the United States had “secured majority U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer,” calling it “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY.” He said Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth negotiated the arrangement with Venezuela's “Highly Respected Interim President” Delcy Rodriguez, “through a partnership with private business.”
The context that headline omits: the government granting the concession is the one the United States installed. In January 2026, the U.S. military carried out an operation that captured then-President Nicolas Maduro to face narcoterrorism charges, and this tracker has documented the administration's statement that “we're going to run the country,” its indefinite control of Venezuelan oil sales, and the roughly $13 billion in Venezuelan oil the administration had already sold by July with only a fraction traced (see Trump Launches a Military Operation to Capture Maduro and Says, 'We're Going to Run the Country', The Administration Has Made About $13 Billion Selling Venezuela's Oil. Only $300 Million Can Be Publicly Traced. and Venezuelan Oil Sales in Qatar Offshore Account).
What is actually known about the deal is thin. Al Jazeera reported it involves 17 strategic oil fields, roughly a fifth of Venezuela's 303 billion barrels, the largest known reserves on earth, and that the extraction partner is a private business the administration has not named. No fixed terms have been released. Oil market researcher Rory Johnston called the headline figure “a red herring” with “little relevance to any actual deals, the real relevant details of which are still almost entirely unknown,” and “just a classic big number.”
The timing is domestic. Gas averaged $4.09 a gallon the day of the announcement, up 27 percent in a year, as the Iran war reduced Strait of Hormuz transits from about 100 ships a day to a handful, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve sat at lows not seen since the 1980s. The midterms are ten weeks away. Trump said the deal would bring down prices at the pump; Rubio called it “a huge win” that would bring Venezuela “nearly $100 billion in private investment.”
Trump's claim that the transaction “MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves” treats another country's oil, held under a concession from an installed government, as American reserves. Whatever the deal's final terms turn out to be, the structure is the story: the United States invaded a country, captured its president, installed its interim leadership, and announced from the White House that it now controls a fifth of that country's oil through an unnamed private partner.
The private partner has since been identified. According to The Wall Street Journal, as reported by Reason on September 3, the United States is taking a 35 percent passive stake in North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a company led by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, which gets the opportunity to develop 17 fields said to hold 65 billion barrels.
Two reports describe U.S. officials easing Betancourt's legal problems abroad; neither has been independently confirmed. The Washington Post, citing people who spoke on condition of anonymity, reported that Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau contacted Swiss officials about Betancourt in January, and that on a March call with Swiss prosecutors, Todd Blanche, then deputy attorney general, said it was important to the United States that Betancourt be free to travel and preferable that the case be resolved without criminal penalties. The State Department said it does not comment on private diplomatic conversations or specific visa cases. In Spain, El País reported on September 14 that a judge has waited more than nine months for a U.S. response to a request for cooperation in a money laundering case, and warned in an August 10 filing that he “cannot wait indefinitely for U.S. authorities.”
On September 16, 2026, Continental Resources, the company founded by oil billionaire Harold Hamm, signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Venezuela's state oil company to develop the Ayacucho 2 block in the Orinoco Belt, which the company says holds an estimated 30 billion barrels of resource in place; a binding contract is expected “in the coming weeks.” Continental said it pursued the deal “Following the Trump Administration's call for American energy companies to help rebuild Venezuela's oil industry.” CNBC, citing OpenSecrets, reported Hamm gave more than $1 million to the political action committee Make America Great Again in 2023 and 2024. No source has reported that the administration gave Continental special treatment.
Update (October 21, 2026): ProPublica reviewed the signed 18-page agreement, marked as a “sensitive” government document, and supporting papers. The United States takes a 35% stake in Alejandro Betancourt's firm, North American Blue Energy Partners, through a Barbados-registered parent company, and gains the right to buy 20% of its oil at $30 a barrel, less than a third of recent prices. A seven-member board governs for an initial 15-year term. Orlando Alvarado, a party the administration never disclosed, signed for the parent company; the Miami Herald reported that federal prosecutors once identified him as an unindicted co-conspirator in an embezzlement scheme, and the company says neither he nor Betancourt has been charged. The agreement does not explicitly guarantee the roughly $200 billion in royalties and taxes to Venezuela the White House has cited. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called it a “historic deal.”
Correction (October 21, 2026): an earlier version said The Hill reported Harold Hamm is among the donors to the White House ballroom. The entry did not cite that report, so the claim has been removed. A Yahoo Finance copy of a Bloomberg story on Continental's deal, which no longer loads, was also removed; Continental's own release and CNBC remain.