President Donald Trump said on Friday that the United States has entered an agreement with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels of the South American country’s oil reserves. Trump announced the move in a social media post and said the deal was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez. “The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” he wrote.
The announcement follows an earlier U.S. operation, carried out at Trump’s direction nearly nine months ago, that captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and transported him to the United States to face federal narcoterrorism and drug‑trafficking charges, the post said. The timing adds to pressure on the administration to address rising pump prices and energy security.
Trump has faced growing calls to ease gasoline costs as the war in Iran reaches a six‑month mark with no clear end. The United States has tapped its strategic petroleum reserve (SPR), and in early August the reserve fell below 300 million barrels-more than 100 million barrels lower than at the start of 2026, according to the report cited in the source.
In the days after Maduro’s ouster in January, Trump publicly explored allowing U.S. oil companies to return to Venezuela to develop its fields. He has also argued that Venezuela effectively stole U.S. assets when former president Hugo Chávez nationalized hundreds of foreign‑owned holdings decades ago, including those owned by American firms.
Venezuela is widely reported to hold one of the world’s largest crude deposits, with an estimated 303 billion barrels in the ground-roughly 17 percent of global supply, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says. Experts note those reserves are largely mapped and known, but poor and dilapidated infrastructure has limited Venezuela’s output to about 1 percent of the world’s oil production.
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Original Source: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trump-announces-biggest-oil-deal-in-world-history-with-venezuela-11973190#publisher=newsstand
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Publish Date: 2026-08-29 05:31:00
