President Donald Trump on Friday said the US has entered an agreement with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels of the South American country’s oil reserves.
Trump in a social media post announced the agreement he said was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez.
Trump in a social media post announced the agreement he said was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez. The announcement of the deal comes nearly nine months after the US military at Trump’s direction carried out an operation to capture Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro and spirit him to the United States to face federal narcoterrorism and drug trafficking charges. In the days following Maduro’s ouster in January, Trump floated the idea of US oil companies returning to Venezuela to tap its oil reserves. Trump has argued that Venezuela stole U.S. oil when former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s moved decades ago to nationalize hundreds of foreign-owned assets, including those owned by American oil companies. Energy Information Administration. Unlike other parts of the world, where geologists have to search for untapped oil, the reserves under Venezuela’s soil are largely mapped and known, experts say.
Because of dilapidated infrastructure, the country only produces about 1% of the world’s oil, but. Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world, with an estimated 303 billion barrels of crude oil in the ground. That’s about 17% of the world’s supply, according to the U.S.
