![\"Venezuela's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/venezuelas-acting-president-delcy-rodriguez-speaks-during-a-XWT734N2AVBJZD4DK33RHNXUKI.jpg\")
<\/p>\nUS President Donald Trump on Saturday said the US has entered an agreement with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels of the South American country\u2019s oil reserves.<\/p>\n
Trump in a social media post announced the agreement he said was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Venezuela\u2019s interim President Delcy Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n
The Venezuelan government\u2019s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The announcement of the deal comes nearly nine months after the US military at Trump\u2019s direction carried out an operation to capture Venezuela\u2019s president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and spirit him to the United States to face federal narcoterrorism and drug trafficking charges.<\/p>\n
Trump faces mounting pressure to address high gas prices as the war in Iran on Saturday reached a six-month milestone with no conclusion in sight. The US has tapped its strategic petroleum reserves, which in early August fell below 300 million barrels, down by more than 100 million barrels since the start of 2026.<\/p>\n
The US-Israel war against Iran has led to a dramatic slowdown of Gulf oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz, which about 20% of the world’s petroleum passed through prior to the conflict.<\/p>\n
The average price of gas in the US stood at about US$4.09 (NZ$6.92) a gallon on Saturday, according to AAA. The average price was US$3.21 (NZ$5.43) at the same time last year.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez speaks during a press conference addressing the government’s response to the back-to-back earthquakes in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, July 2, 2026. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Trump, in his social media post, alluded to the Venezuela deal being part of a private partnership. The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment about the private sector partners involved in the deal, and details on how the arrangement would work were not provided.<\/p>\n
Persuading big American oil companies to return the region could face headwinds given and decades of badly damaged infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Days after the ouster of Maduro, Trump gathered oil executives at the White House and called on them to rush back into Venezuela. Executives expressed interest in the opportunity but there was also a measure of caution given their past experience in the country.<\/p>\n
Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest US oil company, said at that moment he saw the country as \u201cuninvestable\u201d.<\/p>\n
But Trump has insisted that his administration has brought a measure of stability to Venezuela.<\/p>\n
He has argued that Venezuela stole US oil when former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez\u2019s moved decades ago to nationalise hundreds of foreign-owned assets, including those owned by American oil companies.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez, in one of her early moves after taking power, signed a law that opens the nation\u2019s oil sector to privatisation and reversed a bedrock tenet of the self-proclaimed socialist movement that had ruled the country for more than two decades.<\/p>\n
Rubio said on X that the agreement would usher in US$100 billion (NZ$169.15) in private investment into Venezuela and lead to lower gas prices in the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis deal is a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people,\u201d Rubio posted.<\/p>\n
Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world, with an estimated 303 billion barrels of crude oil in the ground. That\u2019s about 17% of the world\u2019s supply, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Unlike other parts of the world, where geologists have to search for untapped oil, the reserves under Venezuela\u2019s soil are largely mapped and known, experts say. But because of dilapidated infrastructure, the country only produces about 1% of the world\u2019s oil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump on Saturday said the US has entered an agreement with Venezuela to take control…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[65,42,43,64,40,38,41,39,66],"class_list":["post-583844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}