Jim Warren is a recovering academic as retired adjunct professor and lecturer in environmental sociology at the University of Regina.
A woman walks near of a oil storage tank of Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA in Cabimas, Venezuela, Tuesday, Sep. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
After a couple of weeks of self-congratulations and grandstanding, the future of the Trump administration’s “Biggest Oil Deal in History” is looking a lot less bright.
Two streams of ideas have emerged in the legacy and independent media casting doubt on the deal’s feasibility. One cause for concern is expressions of nationalist opposition to the agreement among Venezuelans. The other involves the combination of wishful thinking and opportunities for corruption built into the structure of the deal itself.
Sure, Venezuela’s president Delcy Rodriguez has signed off on the agreement. But what choice did she have? The Americans installed her as president after they arrested Nicolás Maduro, making her Trump’s puppet. Rodriguez and her close associates risk being removed from office, imprisoned in the US or worse should they defy their American masters.
Even the Nobel Prize winning leader of Venezuela’s opposition, María Corina Machado, has been careful not to outright denounce the deal. She doesn’t want to be forbidden from running for office should the Americans ever decide to force the Rodriguez government to hold free and fair elections.
That being said, Machado has indeed attempted to qualify her support for the deal. A video has apparently been circulating in which she said, “The United States is the principal partner Venezuela needs to fully develop its strategic potential,” which she then followed with the qualification “And precisely because the partnership between Venezuela and the United States is strategic for both countries, we all need to make sure this [oil deal] is done right.”
Machado has wisely allowed herself some wiggle room in case the big oil deal proves unpopular among Venezuelans or collapses due to its built-in deficiencies.
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Serious dissent is on the rise
Helpfully, several mainstream and independent news organizations have recently reported on a number of high profile Venezuelans who have openly denounced the deal.
There is Elias Jaua, a former Venezuelan vice president under Hugo Chavez (Maduro’s predecessor as president). He compares the Trump administration’s takeover of 65% of Venezuela’s oil reserves to be an outright foreign occupation. Juan Barreto, a former mayor of Caracas, agrees. He claims the oil agreement shows that Venezuela has become a U.S. colony.
Rafael Ramirez, a former president of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Venezuela’s state-owned oil company and one time oil minister under Hugo Chavez, has said the deal is an illegitimate, unconstitutional, pillaging of Venezuela’s resources. Another former Chavez government official, Andrés Izarra a socialist communications specialist has denounced Delcy Rodriguez as a traitor.
The level of dissent expressed by the deal’s critics foreshadows the reappearance of anti-government protests by Venezuelans over their country’s lack of democracy, government incompetence and corruption. There has been a surge in nationalist sentiment along with demands for the reassertion of national sovereignty and independence. Add to that the residue of true believers in Hugo Chavez-styled authoritarian socialism plus a military leadership addicted to bribes and embezzlement—and we can’t forget about the socialists’ secret police. What you get is a recipe for political unrest and infighting, civil disobedience and instability.
In a previous column I discussed the potential for political-economic disruption in Venezuela given the presence of armed drug gangs and remnants of Columbia’s drug-trade funded Marxist guerilla movements operating along the Columbia-Venezuela border. That was before reporting on the mood among conventional opinion leaders became available. But, the armed and dangerous outlaws haven’t gone away. They remain in the wings waiting to add extra spice to Venezuelan political life whenever profitable opportunities arise.
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Terms of the agreement
Neither the Trump administration nor the Rodriguez government has released the actual text of the agreement. But as more details about it are uncovered skepticism increases, making it less and less likely that the project will unfold as seamlessly as Washington imagines. For example, we now know that Washington has assumed control over 65% of Venezuela’s oil reserves spread across 17 separate oil fields for the next 100 years. The US president is the ultimate authority behind the deal, but he is turning over management and operation of the oil fields to a private company, North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP).
The Americans will take a 35% “passive” ownership stake in NABEP which, believe it or not, will be held by the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital. Yes, Pete Hegseth along with his team of oil industry experts and geopolitical wizards will ensure everything is on the up and up. The Pentagon has also been tasked with collecting and banking the royalty fees owed to Venezuela under the deal. The Trump administration claims the royalties will amount to $200 billion over the first 25 years of the agreement.
The Pentagon will hold the royalty payments in trust in the US until such a time as somebody in authority decides funds should be transferred to the Venezuelan government. What could possibly go wrong?
The White House has also disclosed that the NABEP will be required to turn 20% of its oil production over to the U.S. State Department at cost. Trump is anxious to get his hands on that oil so he can replenish America’s depleted Strategic Petroleum Reserves.
Up until the big deal was announced the US had seven federal agencies with regulatory roles in domestic oil production and marketing. The Pentagon and the State Department were not among them. In whose fantasy world do diplomats and the War Department have the know how to manage a huge oil enterprise?
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Look who’s in charge of production
The agreement looks even worse to people who’ve examined the resume of Alejandro Betancourt, the man who holds the controlling interest in NABEP.
Betancourt made his fortune doing sketchy business deals with the socialist governments of Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro. He was accused by US prosecutors of laundering money he embezzled from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA. Prosecutors from Spain and Switzerland also suspected Betancourt of money laundering and issued warrants for his arrest. Al Jazeera reported he was arrested twice in London last year under Swiss warrants.
According to a CNN report, as of January of this year Betancourt along with 37 other people with Venezuelan connections, including Nicolás Maduro, were listed as having their assets frozen by the Swiss government. Swiss officials said they wanted to ensure “any illicit assets acquired cannot be transferred out of Switzerland.”
Betancourt remained under investigation until recently. As it happened, final negotiations leading to Trump’s big oil deal coincided with the dropping of the charges facing Betancourt in Florida. CNN alleges that orders for the dropping of charges came from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
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Blanche allegedly followed up the dropping of charges in the US by persuading Swiss authorities to rescind their warrants, which allowed Betancourt to travel to the US. It all came together in time for Betancourt to participate in finalizing the oil agreement with American officials including Marco Rubio. Rubio then installs Betancourt and his company, North American Blue Energy Partners, as an integral actor in the deal to control Venezuela’s oil reserves and production.
The end result: an allegedly corrupt Trump administration has partnered with an allegedly corrupt Venezuelan businessman to operate the 17 oil fields included in the big deal. Some observers, including yours truly, will be watching to see when they start stealing from each other.
We are left with serious questions about the feasibility of the deal as a successful business venture that will actually benefit the people of Venezuela. Nationalist sentiment and Venezuelans’ desire for democracy and independence will likely reach critical mass when it becomes apparent the deal won’t work as advertised. The nationalist opposition will attract new adherents and grow in strength as the deal’s deficiencies become obvious; especially if hard evidence of rampant corruption is discovered.
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