{"id":600799,"date":"2026-08-30T17:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T17:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/600799\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T17:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T17:18:09","slug":"venezuelas-delcy-rodriguez-defends-endless-benefits-of-her-oil-deal-with-trump-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/600799\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela\u2019s Delcy Rodr\u00edguez defends \u2018endless\u2019 benefits of her oil deal with Trump | Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

Venezuela\u2019s interim president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, has defended her government\u2019s highly controversial energy deal<\/a> with Donald Trump, insisting the South American country will maintain ownership and sovereignty over its massive oil reserves.<\/p>\n

Rodr\u00edguez, who assumed power in January after Trump ordered the abduction of the president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, took to the airwaves on Saturday to push back against criticism of what the US president has called \u201cthe biggest oil deal in world history\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe benefits are endless,\u201d claimed Rodr\u00edguez, a former vice-president whom Trump backed after ordering Maduro\u2019s capture during a special forces raid on the capital, Caracas.<\/p>\n

During a six-minute television broadcast, Venezuela\u2019s acting leader claimed the deal would help her resource-rich country develop its economy, earn revenues of more than $209bn (\u00a3154bn), and become \u201can energy powerhouse\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rodr\u00edguez said: \u201cAs everyone knows, our country has the biggest oil reserves in the world. But having resources underground isn\u2019t enough. We need investment, technology, infrastructure [and] production capacity to convert this wealth into wellbeing for our people.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cIt\u2019s no use having our oil reserves underground, only to appear in statistics or bookkeeping \u2026 and for us not to be able to convert and translate them into development for Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump announced the \u201cgroundbreaking\u201d deal on Friday, calling it a \u201chistoric transaction [that] more than doubles American oil reserves \u2026 while helping to continue to set Venezuela on a course toward Tremendous Success and Great Prosperity\u201d.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: \u201cOne of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil<\/a> is fill up the Strategic National Reserves which, because of Sleepy Joe Biden, has been virtually emptied.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump added: \u201cThe \u2018topping out\u2019 process will begin very shortly, and is a Gift from Venezuela to the People of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hours after seizing Maduro on 3 January, Trump warned Rodr\u00edguez<\/a> she would face an even worse fate if she failed to toe the US line. \u201cIf she doesn\u2019t do what\u2019s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

Details of the agreement \u2013 struck during months of secret talks \u2013 remain sparse but it will reportedly see Washington take control of 65bn barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves.<\/p>\n

The South American country has the world\u2019s largest proven crude oil reserves, with an estimated 303bn barrels, compared with Saudi Arabia\u2019s 268bn and Iran\u2019s 208bn. Rodr\u00edguez said the deal involved 17 \u201cstrategic oilfields\u201d where it was hoped more than 1.5m barrels could be produced each day.<\/p>\n

But the deal has provoked outrage, both among members of Venezuela\u2019s opposition and within the Chavismo political movement of which Rodr\u00edguez is part.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Friday, one prominent opposition figure, who asked not to be named, called the agreement \u201ca massive land grab\u201d by a \u201crapacious, mafioso United States\u201d.<\/p>\n

Writing on X, Rafael Ram\u00edrez, the former head of Venezuela\u2019s state-owned oil company PDVSA, accused Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s administration of \u201cdriving a dagger straight into the heart of the homeland\u201d with the \u201cneocolonial\u201d transaction. \u201cThey are handing over 65bn barrels of our reserves to the United States. That has never happened in Venezuela, and I think nowhere else in the world,\u201d Ram\u00edrez added in an interview<\/a> with the newspaper El Nacional.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, dozens of leftwing protesters marched through Caracas with banners reading: \u201cWe are neither a colony, nor a back yard\u201d and \u201cYankees go home!\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics of the agreement shared an ironic meme on social media suggesting the state oil company\u2019s name should be changed from PDVSA to \u201cPDUSA\u201d.<\/p>\n

In her broadcast, Rodr\u00edguez, the daughter of a Marxist guerrilla who spent years denouncing \u201cimperialist\u201d attempts to snatch her country\u2019s oil reserves, countered claims she was surrendering Venezuela\u2019s natural resources to a foreign power. She thanked Trump and the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, for striking the deal but added: \u201cThere is something that must be made absolutely clear: Venezuela retains the ownership and sovereignty over its resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are thinking of Venezuela\u2019s future,\u201d claimed the politician, whose country was plunged into authoritarian rule and one of the world\u2019s worst peacetime economic crises during Maduro\u2019s 13-year rule.<\/p>\n

The deal represents an astonishing U-turn from Rodr\u00edguez and the socialist, anti-imperialist political movement she and Maduro inherited from Hugo Ch\u00e1vez after his death in 2013.<\/p>\n

In one 2024 speech, footage of which circulated on social media after Friday\u2019s announcement, Rodr\u00edguez lambasted the Venezuelan opposition, accusing it of seeking to surrender the country\u2019s oil, natural gas and gold reserves to its \u201cmasters\u201d in Washington.<\/p>\n

Last September, as the US tightened the screws on Maduro, Rodr\u00edguez told the New York Times<\/a>: \u201cThe Pentagon always had a strategic objective of obtaining Venezuelan reserves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deal will reportedly involve the Pentagon\u2019s Office of Strategic Capital, which channels funds into projects seen as important for national security. It will also involve a private company owned by Alejandro Betancourt, a controversial UK-based tycoon who has emerged as a key intermediary between the Trump administration<\/a> and Rodr\u00edguez.<\/p>\n

Opposition politicians fear the deal will scupper attempts to recover Venezuela\u2019s democracy and hold fresh presidential elections. Maduro is widely believed to have stolen the last vote, in 2024, and Rodr\u00edguez has deflected questions about a future election, saying vaguely that it will happen \u201csome day\u201d. Trump has also said Venezuela is \u201cnot really ready\u201d for elections.<\/p>\n

Writing on X, the opposition leader Juan Pablo Guanipa, said: \u201cThe only way to truly reactivate the Venezuelan economy in the long term and make this agreement benefit both parties is through a free election that leads to a representative government, clear rules of the game, rule of law, and institutions that allow our resources to be managed transparently and for the benefit of the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without that, the energy deal was like \u201ca skyscraper [built] on pillars of clay\u201d, Guanipa added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venezuela\u2019s interim president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, has defended her government\u2019s highly controversial energy deal with Donald Trump, insisting the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-600799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}