U.S. Oil Deal Turns Venezuela’s Barrels Into Spoils

The U.S. government has the right to buy the first 20% of North American Blue Energy Partners’ Venezuelan oil at $30 a barrel, below the $80 open-market price. President Donald Trump called the first million barrels a gift. The deal’s own terms tell a less tidy story: the cargo’s value will be recovered through future deliveries, not erased.

Rep. Dan Casten, a critic of the administration’s Venezuela policy, told CNN, “President Trump has purposefully covered up the details of his Venezuela oil scheme. We still don't know exactly how much money is involved or where that money is going.” No grassroots organizing or mutual-aid response appears in the account; the decisions and payments sit with governments and corporate partners.

Who Controls the Barrels

Under an August agreement the White House called the “biggest oil deal in world history,” the Pentagon took an equity stake in the company that owns NABEP, described as Venezuela’s second-largest private oil producer. The U.S. State Department holds the right to buy the first 20% of NABEP’s Venezuelan production at the cost of production, $30 a barrel. That price is below what Venezuelan oil was selling for on the open market: $80 a barrel.

NABEP is the U.S. government’s partner in a major Venezuelan oil investment. Its owner is controlled by the family of Alejandro Betancourt López, an international businessman based in the United Kingdom whom CNN described as controversial. The arrangement puts state institutions and a private company at the center of decisions over Venezuelan oil and its sale.

A “Gift” Settled Later

On Tuesday, October 27, Trump said Venezuela had provided the United States with 1 million barrels “as a gift at no cost to American taxpayers.” Traveling to a political rally in Corpus Christi, Texas, he planned to show oil tankers arriving with the first proceeds from NABEP’s partnership in Venezuela. “We took over Venezuela very successfully, and they've sent me as a gift a boatload of a million barrels of oil, and I'm giving that to the United States of America,” he told reporters.

NABEP first said the United States had purchased the oil at a substantially reduced price. After Trump’s announcement, the company amended its statement to say the first cargo would arrive in Texas at no cost to taxpayers. Its initial release said the cargo was part of the U.S. government’s right to buy 20% of production “at cost, with no markup,” under the August agreement with the U.S. Departments of State and War.

A person familiar with the deal’s terms said the cargo’s value would be settled through adjustments to future offtake pricing instead of an upfront cash payment. The first million barrels were sold at $0 a barrel, with the company recouping the value through later deliveries. For example, the next million barrels could sell for $60 a barrel, bringing the average price across the two shipments to $30. A White House spokesperson acknowledged that only NABEP’s first shipment would come at no cost to taxpayers.

Oil, Jobs and the Power to Decide

The Trump administration said foreign investment was needed for Venezuela to benefit from its oil resources and that the deal would support Venezuelan jobs. Venezuela’s oil infrastructure had deteriorated over several decades, reducing production capacity to around 1.2 million barrels per day from more than 3 million in the 1990s. The account gives no further detail on how the deal’s proceeds will be distributed or what share of its benefits will reach Venezuelan workers.

At a Tuesday evening rally, Trump called the U.S. military operation in Venezuela in January “the greatest oil victory in history.” He pointed to the tanker and said, “To the victor belong the spoils, right?” On January 3, while announcing the capture of President Nicolás Maduro, he said the operation concerned securing Venezuela’s resources. “These are core to our national security,” Trump said, describing commerce, territory and resources as “iron laws” that determine global power. The barrels may arrive under a claim of no cost; the arrangement still gives the U.S. government privileged access and settles the bill through oil yet to be delivered.