An oil pumpjack on Lake Maracaibo in Cabimas, Zulia state, Venezuela. Photograph: Gaby Oraa/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenAn oil pumpjack on Lake Maracaibo in Cabimas, Zulia state, Venezuela.
Prefer the Guardian on GoogleReports that the US is preparing to claim a big stake in Venezuela’s massive energy reserves have sparked an outcry, with critics describing the move as “predatory” and a “rapacious” land grab.
Several media outlets this week reported that the Trump administration – which abducted Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, in January and has steered the South American country ever since – hopes to secure long-term access to its oil and gasfields.
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves with an estimated 303bn barrels, compared with Saudi Arabia’s 268bn and Iran’s 208bn.
On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal said Trump officials were in “advanced talks” with Venezuelan officials to take “a direct stake in more than a dozen oilfields” containing 90bn barrels, nearly a third of Venezuela’s energy reserves.
Axios claimed the deal would be “a legacy-defining moment for President Trump”, with one unnamed official telling the US outlet: “Calling this deal huge would be an understatement.
Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the negotiations, said one deal under discussion was a 100-year lease on several oilfields.
The reports caused unease and anger among members of Venezuela’s opposition, who are already up in arms about Trump’s failure to bring about genuine political change after capturing Maduro.
Since January’s special forces raid on Caracas, Venezuela has been led by an interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice-president and minister of petroleum.
Meanwhile, the exiled opposition leader, María Corina Machado, whose movement is believed to have won the 2024 presidential elections, has been sidelined.
Ricardo Hausmann, an exiled former minister and opposition supporter, wrote on X: “An illegitimate interim government with an illegitimate hydrocarbons law has no legitimacy to strike this unconstitutional deal.
The economist Francisco Rodríguez urged Venezuela’s national assembly to reject what he called a “predatory deal”. “Handing over Venezuela’s oil wealth to the US contravenes the constitution and is not in the interest of the Venezuelan people – much more when it is done at gunpoint,” Rodríguez said.
Luz Mely Reyes, a prominent journalist and government critic, sarcastically called the “surrender” of Venezuela’s natural riches “the deal of the century”.
Gregory Brew, an energy historian and Eurasia Group analyst, anticipated “quite a lot of suspicion and rejection of any deal that would hand the United States government effective control over Venezuelan resources”.
Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it matters.
Brew said the reported deal reminded him of how BP, then the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, controlled the oil resources of Iraq and Iran at the start of the last century.
Venezuela’s post-Maduro conversion into what many call a US protectorate is the most dramatic play in Trump’s push to reassert Washington’s influence over Latin America as part of the so-called “Donroe Doctrine”.
That policy is a 21st-century adaptation of the 19th-century Monroe doctrine by which President James Monroe sought to keep European powers out of the Americas.
Trump’s version is about countering China’s growing footprint in the region and imposing US will through economic and military pressure.
Maduro’s downfall has brought some change to Venezuela, with hundreds of political prisoners freed under Rodríguez and talks about reforming the regime-controlled supreme court taking place.
But no date has been set for a fresh presidential election and Machado has been unable to return from exile. “Delcy’s been doing a fantastic job,” Trump told reporters last month, claiming Venezuela was “not really ready” for a vote.
