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On 31 August 2026, Present Trump posted to the White House Website a Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Announces Historic Oil Agreement to Secure American Energy Dominance and Drive Venezuela’s Economic Recovery. In it, President Trump explained the deal this way:
In the biggest oil deal in world history, President Donald J. Trump has secured U.S. majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela – vastly expanding our current U.S. territorial proven reserves of roughly 46 billion barrels. This deal secures our energy dominance for the next century—all at zero cost to the United States. The deal, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, gives the U.S. government powerful governance rights, economic ownership, and guaranteed low-cost off-take from a new private Venezuelan oil champion, which will be the second-largest private oil company by reserves in the world
This agreement granted North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) 100-year concessions for 17 Venezuelan oil fields with proven reserves of approximately 65 billion barrels, while securing for the U.S. government a 35% equity stake in NABEP’s parent, below-market off-take rights, and extensive governance controls.
This reflection provides a summary of the agreement, situates it within the sequence of executive orders, sanctions relief, and hydrocarbons law reform that preceded it, and documents the polarised reactions it has provoked across the Venezuelan political spectrum and at the United Nations Security Council. It compares the NABEP arrangement with historical precedents in American oil diplomacy, including the Aramco concessions in Saudi Arabia and the 1928 Red Line Agreement, identifying the direct U.S. government equity stake as the principal structural novelty. The paper then applies the discourse-analytic and semiotic framework I developed in ‘The Conceptual Architecture of America First—Ideological Transactionalism and the Case of Cuba’ (2026) to interpret the agreement as a manifestation of the ‘merchant/transactional’ cognitive archetype now dominant in American foreign policy. A methodological qualification identifies the limitations of this semiotic lens and sketches how realist international relations theory, dependency theory, international law scholarship, and political economy would each frame the agreement from different conceptual starting points.
The full text of the Summary and Analysis of the Oil Agreement follows below along with the text of the White House Fact Sheet.
Summary and Analysis: The White House Fact Sheet on the U.S.–Venezuela Oil Agreement of 31 August 2026
Larry Catá Backer
Abstract
On 31 August 2026, the White House released a fact sheet announcing what the Trump Administration described as ‘the biggest oil deal in world history’—an agreement granting North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) 100-year concessions for 17 Venezuelan oil fields with proven reserves of approximately 65 billion barrels, while securing for the U.S. government a 35% equity stake in NABEP’s parent, below-market off-take rights, and extensive governance controls. This paper provides a source-grounded summary of the agreement, situates it within the sequence of executive orders, sanctions relief, and hydrocarbons law reform that preceded it, and documents the polarised reactions it has provoked across the Venezuelan political spectrum and at the United Nations Security Council. It compares the NABEP arrangement with historical precedents in American oil diplomacy, including the Aramco concessions in Saudi Arabia and the 1928 Red Line Agreement, identifying the direct U.S. government equity stake as the principal structural novelty. The paper then applies the discourse-analytic and semiotic framework I developed in ‘The Conceptual Architecture of America First—Ideological Transactionalism and the Case of Cuba’ (2026) to interpret the agreement as a manifestation of the ‘merchant/transactional’ cognitive archetype now dominant in American foreign policy. A methodological qualification identifies the limitations of this semiotic lens and sketches how realist international relations theory, dependency theory, international law scholarship, and political economy would each frame the agreement from different conceptual starting points.
Executive Summary
On 28 August 2026, President Donald Trump announced that the United States had concluded what his administration called the biggest oil deal in history with Venezuela. Three days later, the White House published a fact sheet setting out the terms. This paper summarises that fact sheet, examines what is known about the deal from public sources, and offers an analytical perspective on its significance.
The core of the arrangement involves a privately held oil company called North American Blue Energy Partners, or NABEP, which has been operating in Venezuela for several years and currently produces roughly 160,000 to 200,000 barrels of oil per day. Under the deal, Venezuelan interim authorities granted NABEP 100-year rights to operate 17 oil fields containing an estimated 65 billion barrels of proven reserves—more than the entire proven reserves currently held within U.S. territory. In return, the U.S. government received a 35 percent ownership stake in NABEP’s parent company, the right to buy 20 percent of all oil produced at cost price, and veto power over the company’s board of directors. The agreement is governed by U.S. law.
NABEP is controlled by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt López, who has faced money laundering investigations in Spain and Switzerland but has never been formally charged. The company’s former minority owner, American energy tycoon Harry Sargeant III, was forced to sell his stake under pressure from the U.S. Treasury Department in August 2026.
The deal has provoked intense controversy. Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, insists the concessions last 25 years—not 100—and that Venezuelan sovereignty over its resources is preserved. Opposition politicians have called the deal illegitimate. Critics on the left have labelled it neo-colonialism. At the United Nations, multiple countries warned that U.S. actions in Venezuela threatened the foundations of international law. As of late August 2026, no official signed text of the agreement had been made public.
The analytical section of this paper draws on my development of a framework for understanding the shift in American foreign policy from an institutional, rules-based approach to what I call a ‘merchant/transactional’ orientation. In this reading, the NABEP deal is not simply an oil transaction but a manifestation of a fundamentally different way of conducting foreign relations—one in which the state acts as a deal-maker rather than a rule-enforcer, and in which sovereignty, security, and development are all understood through the logic of the transaction. The paper also notes that this is one analytical lens among several, and briefly describes how scholars in international relations, international law, dependency theory, and political economy would approach the same agreement from different starting points.
I. Summary of the Factsheet
The attached document is a White House fact sheet dated 31 August 2026 announcing what the Trump Administration describes as ‘the biggest oil deal in world history’.[1] Signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the agreement purports to secure U.S. majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela, vastly expanding the current U.S. territorial proven reserves of roughly 46 billion barrels. The fact sheet is structured around three thematic pillars.
A. Securing U.S. Energy Dominance
Venezuelan interim authorities have granted North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a privately held oil company described as the second-largest private Venezuelan oil producer, 100-year concessions for 17 oil fields with proven reserves of approximately 65 billion barrels.[2] NABEP has in turn granted the U.S. Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital a 35% equity stake in its corporate parent, described as representing ‘up to hundreds of billions in value and dividends’.[3] The Department of State has secured the right to purchase 20% of all NABEP off-take at production cost, together with a right of first refusal over the remaining 80% of production. Governance provisions include a U.S. government veto over any board appointment and a requirement that a majority of the board be U.S. citizens. The agreement is governed by U.S. law and subject to U.S. court jurisdiction.[4]
Historical Precedent
The arrangement invites comparison with a series of historical episodes in which American actors acquired equity positions in, or concession-based control over, strategically significant foreign oil resources. In 1933, the Standard Oil Company of California (SOCAL) signed a concession agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to explore for oil in the eastern desert, forming the California Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC), later renamed the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco).[5] In 1948, Standard Oil of New Jersey and Socony-Vacuum acquired stakes alongside SOCAL and Texaco. Aramco operated under these concessions until the Saudi government progressively nationalised the enterprise, beginning with a 25% stake in 1973, rising to 100% by 1980.[6] Similarly, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, in which the British government held shares, became the subject of a well-known nationalisation crisis when Iran’s Prime Minister Mossadegh moved to nationalise the company’s assets in 1951—an episode that, while widely documented in the historical literature, is noted here as general background rather than on the basis of a specific retrieved source. Earlier still, during World War II the United States debated the creation of a Petroleum Reserves Corporation to acquire direct equity in Middle Eastern oil, though this initiative was ultimately abandoned amid industry opposition—again, a well-established episode in the historiography of American oil diplomacy, noted here without a source-specific citation. The 1928 Red Line Agreement among American, British, and French oil companies sought to coordinate exploitation of Ottoman-era oil concessions across the Middle East.[7]
What distinguishes the NABEP arrangement from these precedents is the direct grant to a U.S. government department of a substantial equity stake (35%) in a private company’s parent, together with below-market off-take rights and governance vetoes. In the Aramco case, U.S. government involvement was indirect, mediated through private corporate shareholders and diplomatic support rather than direct ownership.
Venezuelan Reactions and Controversies
The deal has drawn broad criticism across the Venezuelan political spectrum. Acting interim President Delcy Rodríguez defended the agreement, insisting it would last 25 years (contradicting the White House description of 100-year concessions), would preserve Venezuelan sovereignty over natural resources, and would target an increase in crude output to 1.5 million barrels per day.[8] However, Venezuelan opposition figures have denounced the arrangement; Juan Pablo Guanipa, a prominent opposition politician, stated that ‘Venezuelans will not respect this illegitimate deal and no major US oil company will take it seriously because they know it will not last’.[9] Venezuelan hard-liners and opposition forces alike criticised the deal. Critics from the left characterised it as neo-colonialism; the Guardian reported that critics called the move to gain long-term access to Venezuela’s massive energy reserves ‘predatory’.[10] Supporters of Chavismo protested against the agreement and simultaneously demanded Maduro’s release.[11] An analysis published by Xpert Digital noted a fundamental discrepancy: as of late August 2026, an official signed text of the agreement had not been made publicly available.[12]
At the United Nations, the Security Council convened on 5 January 2026 to discuss the United States’ actions in Venezuela. Multiple delegates warned that U.S. actions ‘threaten the very foundations upon which the multilateral world order was built’.[13] Russia’s representative warned of ‘fresh momentum for neocolonialism and for imperialism,’ while Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, and Eritrea (speaking for the Group of Friends of the UN Charter) argued that the U.S. actions constituted a violation of the Charter.[14]
B. Venezuela’s Economic Recovery and Oil Sector Reconstruction
The fact sheet frames the agreement as part of a three-part administration plan of 'stabilization, reconstruction and democratic transition'.[15] NABEP has developed a plan to invest up to $100 billion in new oil infrastructure, and under Venezuela's new hydrocarbons law is expected to pay approximately $200 billion in royalties and taxes over the first 25 years. The fact sheet emphasises that the majority of Venezuela's oil fields are not producing or are vastly underproducing following years of underinvestment.
Executive Orders and Administrative Actions Since 2025
The economic recovery pillar must be situated within a sequence of executive actions taken since the start of the second Trump Administration. On 24 March 2025, Executive Order 14245 imposed tariffs on countries importing Venezuelan oil, designed to restrict revenues flowing to the former Maduro government and to leverage compliance from third states.[16] Following the military operation that removed President Maduro on 3 January 2026, Executive Order 14373, signed on 9 January 2026 and titled 'Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue for the Good of the American and Venezuelan People,' invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to protect Venezuelan oil revenue held in U.S. Treasury accounts from judicial attachment, declaring a national emergency with respect to those funds.[17] The Office of Foreign Assets Control subsequently issued a series of general licenses—GL 46 (29 January 2026), GL 48 (10 February 2026), and GL 49 (13 February 2026)—progressively authorising U.S. persons to engage in transactions related to Venezuelan oil exploration and production.
On 29 January 2026, the Venezuelan National Assembly approved a partial reform of the Organic Law on Hydrocarbons (LOH Reform), enacted with U.S. support, which opened primary oil activities to private sector participation for the first time through two frameworks: minority stakes in mixed companies (empresas mixtas) and production-sharing agreements (contratos de participación productiva).[18] The reform reduced royalties from a flat 30% to a flexible rate of up to 30%, repealed the 2006 reservation of upstream activities to the Republic, and introduced international arbitration clauses for dispute resolution. As King & Spalding noted, these changes came against the backdrop of Venezuelan production having collapsed from approximately 3.5 million barrels per day in the 1990s to roughly 860,000 barrels per day.[19]
NABEP’s Pre-Deal Activities in the Venezuelan Oil Sector
NABEP had been active in Venezuela's oil sector well before the August 2026 agreement. In June 2025, Venezuela signed nine oil deals to counter U.S. sanctions, one of which involved North American Blue Energy Partners, affiliated with energy investor Harry Sargeant III's Global Oil Management Group.[20] NABEP navigated political swings in Venezuela and economic sanctions in recent years to grow production to approximately 160,000–200,000 barrels per day, drawn primarily from Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo region and the Orinoco Belt.[21] The company pioneered a more flexible contract model with PDVSA that gave it greater operational control, a structure that subsequently became the standard for new entrants in the sector. Under Betancourt's leadership, NABEP emerged as the second-largest private oil producer in Venezuela after Chevron, and has been reported to be planning the deployment of more than 50 drilling rigs as part of a broader regional expansion.[22] The Financial Times reported that NABEP was courting private investors for potential oilfield licences and joint ventures.[23]
C. Reasserting the Monroe Doctrine
The fact sheet states that the majority of the incremental oil fields to be operated by NABEP were previously controlled or operated by Russian and Chinese firms or by corrupt associates of the Maduro and Chávez governments. The deal is framed as a re-establishment of the Monroe Doctrine, 'purging foreign malign influence' from the Western Hemisphere.[24]
Secretary Rubio and the Merchant-Transactional Framing
The Monroe Doctrine language of the fact sheet aligns with the broader conceptual framework of America First foreign policy as elaborated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In his remarks at the Munich Security Conference on 14 February 2026, Rubio articulated what I describe as a 'merchant-transactional' reorientation of American foreign policy, in which peace is understood instrumentally as the predicate condition for the operationalisation of transactional frameworks, rather than as an institutional or normative end in itself.[25] In a CBS Face the Nation interview on 4 January 2026, Rubio stated that 'the key to what that regime relies on and is the economy fueled by oil. And right now, it is an oil industry that is backwards and really needs a lot of help and work'.[26] Rubio's discourse, as I analyse it, reveals that for the merchant-transactional archetype, to 'run the country' means to produce an environment in which transactions and the rules of the transactional order tilt in favour of the United States.[27]
The reconstituted Monroe Doctrine, as instantiated in this agreement, thus operates not as a territorial principle but as a transactional one: the displacement of Chinese and Russian firms from Venezuelan oil fields is understood not primarily through the lens of territorial exclusion but through the lens of consolidating American transactional space within the hemisphere.
II. Analysis: The NABEP Agreement Through the Lens of Ideological Transactionalism
Drawing on my analytical framework elaborated in The Conceptual Architecture of America First—Ideological Transactionalism and the Case of Cuba (2026), the NABEP agreement may be situated within a broader cognitive shift in American foreign policy from what I term the 'bureaucratic/institutional' archetype (士) to the 'merchant/transactional' archetype (商).[28]
The Merchant Archetype and the Deal
The merchant archetype may be usefully characterized as 'transactional, risk taking, inductive, reasoning from transactional analogy, non-linear pathways, iterative behaviors, instrumentalization of rules as factors in production'.[29] The NABEP agreement exhibits each of these features. The 35% equity stake granted to the Department of War's Office of Strategic Capital instrumentalises the state itself as a transactional participant, not merely a regulatory overseer. The below-market off-take rights transform what might otherwise be understood as a sovereign resource agreement into an iterative commercial arrangement in which the state participates as a market actor. Rules—including governance provisions such as board vetoes and U.S. law jurisdiction—function not as institutional ends but as 'factors in production,' stabilising the transactional platform without claiming normative authority beyond that function.[30]
The Cognitive Cage of the Agreement
Within this framework, the fact sheet's three pillars—energy dominance, economic recovery, and the Monroe Doctrine—can be understood as three faces of a single cognitive orientation. 'Energy dominance' is the macro-transaction; 'economic recovery' is the stabilisation of the transactional platform (the condition of peace without which the merchant cannot operate); and the 'Monroe Doctrine' is the exclusion of rival transactional actors from the hemispheric marketplace. This is in essence a manifestation of the phenomenology of the merchant-transactional type, within the cognitive cage of which, 'territory and categorization,' are accepted but with respect to which the merchant-transactional type are 'indifferent to their character except to the extent they are useful in organizing transactions and maximizing their value'.[31] Venezuela as territory is significant only insofar as it is the platform upon which transactions are consummated. And that is precisely the case here.
The National Security Strategy of 2025, which might be understood as among the most comprehensive public articulation of the America First cognitive premises, declared that 'economic security is national security'.[32] The NABEP agreement may be understood as the operational fulfilment of that proposition: national security—the protection of the Republic's transactional space—is achieved through the consummation of the transaction itself, not through institutional management of interstate relations.
The Bureaucratic Counter-Narrative
The resistance to the agreement—from both the Venezuelan opposition and the Chavista base, from the United Nations Security Council, and from left critics who invoke the ghost of Juan Vicente Gómez's 1908 concessions—can be understood as the response of the 'bureaucratic/institutional' archetype to what it perceives as a fundamental threat. From within the institutional cognitive cage, sovereignty is an institutional concept inhering in the state apparatus; it cannot be transacted away without destroying the institution itself. The merchant, by contrast, does not understand sovereignty as threatened by the transaction; rather, the transaction is the exercise of sovereignty. The resulting mutual incomprehension—what I have termed a folie à deux in which each archetype 'necessarily' misinterprets the other because they must 'translate into the language of merchants and of bureaucrats respectively'—is precisely what one observes in the discourse surrounding the agreement.[33]
Methodological Qualification: Limitations of the Transactional-Semiotic Lens and Alternative Analytical Frameworks
The analysis offered above is grounded in my discourse-analytic and semiotic methodology, one grounded in cognitively framed phemomenologies that cannot be avoided but is manifested in iterative transactions that both constitute and msanifest its premises and ideologies. That approach proceeds by identifying the cognitive premises—the 'taken for granted assumptions at the core of social action'—that structure the way in which policy actors perceive, categorise, and respond to the world around them.[34] Its strength lies in surfacing the often-invisible conceptual architecture within which policy choices appear natural, inevitable, or self-evidently rational to those who make them. Its contribution is to make visible the cognitive cage itself, and thereby to explain why actors operating within different cages—the merchant and the bureaucrat—consistently talk past one another even when addressing the same material facts.
The approach does, however, carry characteristic limitations. Because it is primarily a discourse-analytic and semiotic exercise—concerned with the signification of official texts, speeches, and policy documents—it is better suited to illuminating how actors frame their choices than to evaluating the material consequences of those choices or their conformity with established legal norms. It does not, by design, attempt to measure the economic efficiency of the NABEP arrangement, to assess whether the agreement violates specific rules of international law, or to trace the distributional effects of oil rents within Venezuelan society. These are not failures of the framework; they are questions that fall outside its conceptual scope and that other disciplinary traditions are specifically equipped to address.
Scholars working within the tradition of realist international relations theory would begin from a fundamentally different conceptual starting point. For the realist, the salient analytical unit is the distribution of material power among states, and the relevant question is not what cognitive archetype structures American discourse but how the agreement alters the balance of power in the Western Hemisphere. A realist analysis would foreground the displacement of Chinese and Russian firms from Venezuelan oil fields as a strategic move within great-power competition, evaluate the agreement against the logic of relative gains and security dilemmas, and assess whether U.S. equity control over Venezuelan oil constitutes a durable shift in hemispheric hegemony or an over-extension of commitments. Within this frame, the Monroe Doctrine language of the fact sheet would be read not as a semiotic signifier of the merchant archetype but as a straightforward assertion of spheres-of-influence politics.
Dependency theory and world-systems analysis would approach the agreement from the standpoint of structural inequality between core and peripheral economies. The relevant conceptual framing would centre on the historical pattern by which resource-rich peripheral states are incorporated into global capital circuits on terms that perpetuate unequal exchange. A dependency theorist would ask whether the NABEP concession—with its below-market off-take rights, U.S. law jurisdiction, and board veto powers—reproduces the structure of earlier concession regimes that transferred value from host states to metropolitan capital, and whether Venezuela's reformed hydrocarbons law genuinely protects sovereign resource control or merely formalises subordination. The invocation of the Gómez-era concessions of 1908 by Venezuelan critics operates precisely within this analytical tradition.[35]
International law scholarship would begin from the normative framework of permanent sovereignty over natural resources, as articulated in General Assembly Resolution 1803 (XVII) of 1962,[36] and from the principles of the UN Charter regarding sovereign equality and non-intervention. The pertinent questions would include whether the agreement, concluded under circumstances of military intervention and regime change, satisfies the requirements of valid state consent; whether the 100-year concession term (or the 25-year term insisted upon by Rodríguez) is compatible with Venezuelan constitutional provisions on subsurface resource ownership; and whether the U.S. government's equity stake and governance vetoes amount to a form of state responsibility-triggering control under the ILC Articles on State Responsibility.[37] The discrepancy between the White House description of 100-year concessions and the Venezuelan government's insistence on a 25-year framework raises fundamental questions about the agreement's legal validity and interpretation that a semiotic analysis of policy discourse, however illuminating, is not positioned to resolve.
Political economy approaches would interrogate the domestic distributional questions that the fact sheet's macro-level framing obscures: who within Venezuela captures the rents from the NABEP arrangement, whether the royalty and tax payments described in the fact sheet are structured to benefit the Venezuelan public or to sustain a particular governing coalition, and how the agreement interacts with the outstanding ICSID arbitration awards held by ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and others against the Venezuelan state.
Each of these traditions would produce a different reading of the same agreement—not because any one of them is 'correct' to the exclusion of the others, but because each begins from different conceptual premises about what matters, what counts as evidence, and what the relevant unit of analysis is. My object is to show that the actors themselves are similarly situated within their own cognitive frameworks, and that the policy choices they make are intelligible only when those frameworks are made visible. The task of evaluating the material, legal, and distributional consequences of those choices requires supplementary analytical work that proceeds from different starting points.
Concluding Observations
The NABEP agreement, thus situated, represents neither a simple resource grab nor a straightforward exercise in economic development. It is a manifestation of the 'merchant president of peace' operating within a cognitive cage in which peace, development, the Monroe Doctrine, and energy dominance are all subordinated to and understood through the logic of the transaction. Whether this transactional ordering proves durable—or whether the institutional counter-narrative reasserts itself, as it did in the Aramco nationalisation of the 1970s—remains, at the time of writing, an open question. A comprehensive assessment will require engagement not only with this semiotic and discourse-analytic dimensions, but also with the realist, dependency-theoretical, international legal, and political-economic dimensions that it intentionally brackets.[38]
III. Reference List
White House and Government Materials
Executive Order 14245, Imposing Tariffs on Countries Importing Venezuelan Oil (24 March 2025)
Executive Order 14373, Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue for the Good of the American and Venezuelan People (9 January 2026) 91 FR 2045
The White House, ‘Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Announces Historic Oil Agreement to Secure American Energy Dominance and Drive Venezuela’s Economic Recovery’ (31 August 2026)
UN Security Council, ‘United States Action in Venezuela Puts Sovereignty of States, International Law at Stake, Many Speakers Tell Security Council’ (5 January 2026) SC/16271
Books and Journal Articles
Backer LC, ‘The Conceptual Architecture of America First—Ideological Transactionalism and the Case of Cuba’ (2026) 14(2) Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs 56
Backer LC, ‘Private Actors and Public Governance Beyond the State: The Multinational Corporation, the Financial Stability Board, and the Global Governance Order’ (2011) 18 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 751
Bromley S, ‘The United States and the Control of World Oil’ (2005) 40(2) Government and Opposition 225
Martin AT, ‘Aramco: The Story of the World’s Most Valuable Oil Concession and Its Landmark Arbitration’ (2020) 7(1) BCDR International Arbitration Review 61
Priestland D, Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A History of the World in Three Castes (Penguin Press 2013)
Scholarly and Legal Analysis
Baker McKenzie, ‘Venezuela’s Hydrocarbons Law Reform: What Businesses Need to Know’ (2 February 2026)
King & Spalding, ‘Venezuela Reforms Hydrocarbons Law: A Potential Sea Change for Foreign Investment in the Oil Sector?’ (2026)
News Articles and Reports
‘Alejandro Betancourt Lopez emerges as central deal broker for US energy investment in Venezuela’ (Business Insider Africa)
Basu S, ‘Venezuela oil deal: NABEP gets 100-year concessions, to pay $200 billion in royalty and taxes in first 25 years’ (Livemint, 1 September 2026)
Bloomberg News, ‘Sargeant Said to Exit Venezuela Oil Stake Amid Pressure Campaign’ (EnergyNow, 10 August 2026)
Business Wire, ‘NABEP Appoints Sara Chouraqui as General Counsel’ (Morningstar, 26 August 2026)
CiberCuba Editorial Team, ‘Alejandro Betancourt: the “bolichico” under investigation who became Trump’s oil partner in Venezuela’ (CiberCuba, 31 August 2026)
Holland S and Renshaw J, ‘Exclusive—US oil firm to take over some Venezuelan oilfields previously run by Chinese, Russian companies, officials say’ (Reuters via WMBD Radio, 31 August 2026)
Mithiborwala F, ‘Venezuela: Delcy Rodríguez Government Surrenders to Trump’s Diktats, but the Chavista Masses Oppose the Destruction of Sovereignty’ (Countercurrents, 1 February 2026)
Nunez B, ‘Alejandro Betancourt: The “Bolichico” Under Investigation Who Became Trump’s Oil Partner in Venezuela’ (CubaHeadlines, 31 August 2026)
OCCRP, ‘Jet-Setting Venezuelan Businessman in Corruption Probe Linked to Luxembourg Firms’ (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project)
Reuters, ‘Venezuela’s interim president says US energy deal will last 25 years’ (Reuters, 30 August 2026)
Reuters, ‘White House releases terms of oil deal with North American Blue Energy Partners’ (Reuters, 1 September 2026)
The Economic Times, ‘US oil firm to take over some Venezuelan oilfields previously run by Chinese, Russian companies’ (31 August 2026)
The Guardian, ‘Venezuelan opposition up in arms over reports US wants big stake in oil and gas’ (28 August 2026)
The Miami Herald, ‘Venezuela’s business elite face scrutiny in $1.2 billion money laundering case’ (2019)
Wolfenstein K, ‘US-Venezuela oil deal: If Washington promises 65 billion barrels, but nobody has seen the contract—is it all an election campaign bluff?’ (Xpert Digital, 30 August 2026)
Corporate and Institutional Sources
Aramco, ‘Our History’ (aramco.com)
‘Encyclopaedia Britannica Money—Saudi Aramco’ (Britannica Money)
North American Blue Energy Partners, ‘About Us’ (NABEP)
North American Blue Energy Partners, ‘Company Profile’ (LinkedIn)
Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, ‘The 1928 Red Line Agreement’ (Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations)
Yahoo Finance, ‘Venezuela signs nine oil deals to counter US sanctions’ (6 June 2025)
[1]The White House, ‘Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Announces Historic Oil Agreement to Secure American Energy Dominance and Drive Venezuela’s Economic Recovery’ (31 August 2026).
[2]ibid.
[3]ibid.
[4]ibid.
[5]Martin AT, ‘Aramco: The Story of the World’s Most Valuable Oil Concession and Its Landmark Arbitration’ (2020) 7(1) BCDR International Arbitration Review 61.
[6]Aramco, ‘Our History’ (aramco.com); ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica Money—Saudi Aramco’ (Britannica Money).
[7]Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, ‘The 1928 Red Line Agreement’ (Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations).
[8]Reuters, ‘Venezuela’s interim president says US energy deal will last 25 years’ (Reuters, 30 August 2026).
[9]The Guardian, ‘Venezuelan opposition up in arms over reports US wants big stake in oil and gas’ (28 August 2026).
[10]ibid.
[11]Mithiborwala F, ‘Venezuela: Delcy Rodríguez Government Surrenders to Trump’s Diktats, but the Chavista Masses Oppose the Destruction of Sovereignty’ (Countercurrents, 1 February 2026).
[12]Wolfenstein K, ‘US-Venezuela oil deal: If Washington promises 65 billion barrels, but nobody has seen the contract—is it all an election campaign bluff?’ (Xpert Digital, 30 August 2026).
[13]UN Security Council, ‘United States Action in Venezuela Puts Sovereignty of States, International Law at Stake, Many Speakers Tell Security Council’ (5 January 2026) SC/16271.
[14]ibid.
[15]The White House (n 1).
[16]Executive Order 14245, Imposing Tariffs on Countries Importing Venezuelan Oil (24 March 2025).
[17]Executive Order 14373, Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue for the Good of the American and Venezuelan People (9 January 2026) 91 FR 2045.
[18]Baker McKenzie, ‘Venezuela’s Hydrocarbons Law Reform: What Businesses Need to Know’ (2 February 2026).
[19]King & Spalding, ‘Venezuela Reforms Hydrocarbons Law: A Potential Sea Change for Foreign Investment in the Oil Sector?’ (2026).
[20]Yahoo Finance, ‘Venezuela signs nine oil deals to counter US sanctions’ (6 June 2025).
[21]‘Alejandro Betancourt Lopez emerges as central deal broker for US energy investment in Venezuela’ (Business Insider Africa).
[22]Holland S and Renshaw J, ‘Exclusive—US oil firm to take over some Venezuelan oilfields previously run by Chinese, Russian companies, officials say’ (Reuters via WMBD Radio, 31 August 2026).
[23]Financial Times, as cited in Business Insider Africa (n 21).
[24]The White House (n 1).
[25]Backer LC, ‘The Conceptual Architecture of America First—Ideological Transactionalism and the Case of Cuba’ (2026) 14(2) Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs 56.
[26]ibid.
[27]ibid.
[28]Backer (n 25).
[29]Backer (n 25) (citing Priestland D, Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A History of the World in Three Castes (Penguin Press 2013)).
[30]ibid.
[31]ibid.
[32]ibid.
[33]ibid.
[34]ibid.
[35]ibid.
[36]UNGA Res 1803 (XVII) (14 December 1962) ‘Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources’.
[37]International Law Commission, Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (2001).
[38]Backer (n 25).
Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Announces Historic Oil Agreement to Secure American Energy Dominance and Drive Venezuela’s Economic Recovery
The White House
August 31, 2026
SECURING STABLE & LOW-COST OIL SUPPLY IN OUR HEMISPHERE: In the biggest oil deal in world history, President Donald J. Trump has secured U.S. majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela – vastly expanding our current U.S. territorial proven reserves of roughly 46 billion barrels. This deal secures our energy dominance for the next century—all at zero cost to the United States. The deal, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, gives the U.S. government powerful governance rights, economic ownership, and guaranteed low-cost off-take from a new private Venezuelan oil champion, which will be the second-largest private oil company by reserves in the world:
- In connection with this agreement, the Venezuelan interim authorities have granted North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a privately held oil company that is the second-largest private Venezuelan oil producer and a proven operator, 100-year concessions for 17 oil fields with proven reserves of approximately 65 billion barrels.
- At no cost to the American taxpayer, NABEP has granted the U.S. Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital a 35% equity stake in its corporate parent, representing up to hundreds of billions in value and dividends for the United States.
- NABEP has granted the U.S. Department of State the right to purchase, at production cost, a guaranteed 20% of the off-take from all current and future fields NABEP will operate—ensuring a stable supply of low-cost oil that can facilitate refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which Joe Biden depleted to historic lows, and to provide supply for military and other sensitive uses.
- NABEP has also granted the U.S. Department of State the right of first refusal to purchase the remaining 80% of its production, providing a guaranteed source of energy in our hemisphere in emergency situations.
- The U.S. government has a veto power over the appointment of any member of the board of directors, and a majority of NABEP’s board of directors must be U.S. citizens. NABEP will have reputable U.S. auditors, lawyers, and advisors and the U.S. government’s agreement with NABEP is governed by U.S. law and is subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.
- Millions of barrels of new Venezuelan output will be processed through U.S. refineries and pumped with American rigs and infrastructure, supporting billions in investment in the United States and thousands of jobs here at home.
DRIVING ECONOMIC RECOVERY & THE RECONSTRUCTION OF VENEZUELA’S OIL SECTOR: This groundbreaking privatization and investment in Venezuela’s energy sector is a key step in the Trump Administration’s three-part plan of stabilization, reconstruction and democratic transition. Private-sector led growth in production, output, and investment in Venezuela is a key precondition to driving continued reform and democratic transition following the incredible success of Operation Absolute Resolve:
- NABEP has developed an ambitious plan to rapidly scale production by investing up to $100 billion in new oil infrastructure in Venezuela, helping to drive economic growth, support thousands of high-paying jobs in Venezuela, and lead to tens of billions in broader economic activity.
- NABEP’s concessions are governed by Venezuela’s new hydrocarbons law, adopted with U.S. support, which provides for historic modernization, privatization and development of Venezuela’s lagging oil sector. Under this framework, as it scales production, NABEP will pay an expected $200 billion in royalty and tax payments over the first 25 years, representing critical revenue and fiscal support for current and future Venezuelan governments to fund reconstruction and social development.
- After years of underinvestment and mismanagement, the majority of Venezuela’s oil fields are not producing or vastly underproducing. By investing in a proven private operator with a track record of scaling production in the country, who will be able to raise private American capital to fund capital expenditures, Venezuela has a historic opportunity to revitalize its key sector, drive oil output growth, and grow its economy.
- The U.S. government’s robust governance and audit provisions, along with the Trump Administration’s banking reform, payment oversight and financial monitorship, will ensure tax and royalty payments are spent in the interests of the Venezuelan people.
- The United States is sponsoring reconciliation talks between the 2015 National Assembly and the interim authorities – a process which has already resulted in significant reforms to the Venezuelan judiciary, the release of hundreds of political prisoners, and cooperative efforts to finance reconstruction following the devastating June earthquakes. The process will continue with additional meetings in September.
REASSERTING THE MONROE DOCTRINE & EXPELLING FOREIGN ADVERSARIES FROM OUR HEMISPHERE: The majority of the incremental oil fields to be operated by NABEP were previously controlled or operated by Russian and Chinese firms, or by corrupt cronies of Maduro and Chavez. These malign foreign actors looted Venezuela’s resources for the benefit of American adversaries like Cuba, Russia and China and failed to invest in Venezuela’s infrastructure or development.
- President Trump has re-established the Monroe Doctrine, purging foreign malign influence from our backyard and ensuring American dominance in our hemisphere is never again questioned.
- By working with both new and old partners, President Trump’s Administration is forging new robust, strategic and defensible supply chains in our hemisphere to support the revitalization of our manufacturing and energy sectors after years of globalist decline.
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