Venezuelan oil: Washington claims control over 65 billion barrels

The announcement came by message, not by document. On August 28, 2026, Donald Trump communicated on Truth Social an oil deal with Venezuela, calling it the greatest in world history, as reported by Infobae. In the version circulated by the US presidency, majority control would pass to Washington over a mass of Venezuelan crude already classified as proven reserves exceeding 65 billion barrels: a quantity more than double the roughly 38 billion certified on US territory.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio quantified the counterpart for Caracas at nearly 100 billion dollars in private investment in Venezuela, according to messages reported by La Nación. On the Venezuelan side, acting president Delcy Rodríguez welcomed the agreement, saying it will support the reconstruction of strategic hydrocarbon infrastructure, as reported by CNN en Español.

The act that precedes the announcement. There is a technical element that carries more weight than the statements: on August 27, the day before, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control — OFAC — again amended several licenses related to the Venezuelan oil sector, as documented by El Diario de Hoy, based on the agency’s measures and material from the EFE agency. Licenses are the instrument through which operations otherwise prohibited under the sanctions regime are authorized: it is there, and not in social media messages, that an agreement of this kind becomes operational.

Reserves and production are not the same thing. Sixty-five billion barrels of proven reserves measure what is estimated to be extractable under given technical and economic conditions, not what reaches the market. The gap between the two figures, in Venezuela, depends on the state of the facilities: this is exactly the point raised by Rodríguez’s statement on infrastructure to be rebuilt. An announced investment of 100 billion dollars is, in this reading, the measure of the gap between reserves and production capacity.

The Treasury’s licenses, not the messages, are the point at which an agreement becomes operational.

The domestic US context. In early August, the US strategic crude oil stock stood below the threshold of 300 million barrels; compared with January 2026 levels, the contraction exceeds 100 million. This is a figure that helps explain why access to extra-national heavy crude has become a stated objective, but it says nothing about timing: reserves are rebuilt through purchases, while fields are developed over years.

What we don’t know. We do not know the text of the agreement: no contractual document has been published, and the two parties have communicated compatible but not identical versions. We do not know what “majority control” over reserves located in the subsoil of a third state means legally: equity stakes, service contracts, production offtake rights are different instruments with different consequences. We do not know which OFAC licenses were amended or to what extent. We do not know whether the agreement requires parliamentary steps in Caracas or further authorizations in Washington. Finally, we have no market reactions: no data on prices or quotations appears in the sources available today.

The first verifiable confirmation will be the full publication of the licenses amended on August 27: from there it will become clear which operations are actually authorized, and to which parties.