President Donald Trump has announced an oil arrangement with Venezuela that he says would give the United States control over more than 65 billion barrels of oil. Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, says the plan centers on development of 17 strategic fields with stated proven potential of 65 billion barrels. The scale of the claim is substantial for a country with vast but underdeveloped petroleum resources—and for a White House presenting the arrangement as an energy and gasoline-price initiative. Yet the contract, operator and economic terms that would determine whether the project produces meaningful volumes have not been released publicly.
The missing documentation is more than a disclosure issue. It prevents investors, oil-market participants and Venezuelans from determining what has actually been agreed: whether the United States has an ownership stake, how field rights would be granted, who would fund the work, and what production could be delivered. Reporting by the Associated Press, carried by the Toronto Star, and the BBC says no agreement text has been made public.
Public claims exceed the disclosed commercial terms
Trump described the arrangement as a historic deal and said it would help lower U.S. gasoline prices, according to the BBC. Rodríguez, speaking in Venezuela, said the 17 fields would be developed while preserving Venezuelan sovereignty over natural resources. She also said the arrangement would last 25 years, target output of 1.5 million barrels a day and attract more than $100 billion of investment. Those are governmental projections and stated objectives, not completed financing or production commitments documented in a published agreement.
The AP’s account supplies a different, still incomplete description of the contemplated structure. It reported that a new company involving the U.S. government and an unnamed private operator would receive rights to undeveloped fields for 100 years. An unnamed U.S. official told the AP that the United States would receive 55% of the venture’s effective output, through an ownership interest and rights to buy oil at cost. Neither the identity of the private operator nor the breakdown between equity, marketing rights and purchase rights has been disclosed.
The two accounts leave important terms unreconciled. Rodríguez’s stated 25-year duration and the AP’s reported 100-year field rights could describe separate contracts or layers of a single arrangement, but there is no public document to establish that. The same applies to Trump’s broad assertion of U.S. control: it should not be read as evidence that the United States owns Venezuelan reserves. The public reporting instead points to proposed venture and output rights whose legal and commercial definition remains unknown.
The investment estimates also differ slightly without a public financing plan behind either figure. Rodríguez put potential investment above $100 billion; Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the plan could bring nearly $100 billion in private investment, the BBC reported. Large upstream commitments are generally deployed over time and depend on enforceable field rights, fiscal terms, operating control and project financing. None of those specifics has been published for this arrangement.
A sanctions change preceded the announcement
One verifiable development occurred two days before Trump’s announcement. On Aug. 27, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control amended certain Venezuela-related general licenses, citing investment-related reforms made by Venezuela since January 2026. The OFAC guidance says covered contracts no longer must be interpreted under U.S. law.
The change did not remove all contractual safeguards. OFAC said disputes arising under covered contracts must still be resolved in the United States, the United Kingdom, France or Singapore. That distinction is relevant to prospective energy investors because it changes a governing-law condition while retaining designated venues for dispute resolution.
But the general-license revisions are not a published approval, concession or term sheet for the 17-field project. OFAC’s notice describes a regulatory adjustment affecting specified covered contracts; it does not identify the private operator, specify the fields or establish the announced venture’s ownership structure. Any company considering participation would still need to assess the applicable sanctions rules and the terms of any eventual Venezuelan agreement.
Why oil-market effects would take time
The headline figure—65 billion barrels—describes the stated proven potential associated with the 17 fields. It is not a measure of oil already produced, a published estimate of near-term recoverable output, or barrels added to U.S. reserves. Turning a field portfolio into export supply requires capital, operating agreements and functioning production systems, all of which remain unaddressed in the public descriptions of the deal.
Experts cited in both the AP report and the BBC said any material increase in Venezuelan production would take years. The reports point to the country’s damaged oil infrastructure, the need for major investment and continuing political and legal uncertainty. Those constraints make it difficult to translate a reserve-related announcement into an immediate supply forecast.
Crude quality adds another practical limitation. The BBC reported that Venezuelan oil is predominantly heavy and sour, meaning it is more difficult to refine than the light, sweet crude commonly produced in the United States. That does not prevent the oil from finding buyers, but it means barrels from Venezuela are not necessarily interchangeable with every domestic grade or an instant answer to retail fuel pricing.
NYU energy researcher Amy Myers Jaffe told the AP that the arrangement would not alter prices at U.S. gasoline stations by Labor Day weekend. Retail gasoline prices reflect crude benchmarks, refinery operations, fuel distribution and local taxes as well as available supply. Even an eventual increase in Venezuelan production would have to be large enough, sustained enough and commercially routed into relevant markets before it could affect those broader price dynamics.
The immediate consequence is therefore political and regulatory rather than physical: Washington and Caracas have placed a potentially large oil-development framework on the table, while Treasury has adjusted a related set of contracting rules. Whether the announcement becomes an operating venture depends on documents that have not yet been released—especially the operator’s identity, funding commitments, field-rights terms and the legal meaning of the United States’ reported share of output.