White House Says U.S.-Backed Firm Secured Control of 65 Billion Barrels in Venezuela; Contracts Not Public

The White House said Monday that a deal with Venezuela and North American Blue Energy Partners, or NABEP, would give the company 100-year concessions over 17 oil fields holding about 65 billion barrels of proven reserves, an unusually large package that the administration cast as both an energy-security win and a tool of U.S. influence.

In an Aug. 31 fact sheet titled “President Donald J. Trump Announces Historic Oil Agreement to Secure American Energy Dominance and Drive Venezuela’s Economic Recovery,” the White House said the reserves involved amount to roughly one-fifth of Venezuela’s oil base. Using the widely cited figure of about 303 billion barrels in Venezuelan proven reserves from standard EIA and OPEC references, 65 billion barrels would equal about 21% of the country’s total.

“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….” the fact sheet said.

The scale matters because Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and because the administration described terms that would go well beyond a conventional commercial arrangement. But as of Sept. 1, the public record consisted chiefly of the White House fact sheet and company statements. Reuters, AP and other major outlets reported that the underlying concession contracts, the list of fields, the relevant Venezuelan decree or Gaceta Oficial texts, and the legal instrument for the U.S. equity stake had not been published.

The White House said NABEP granted the U.S. Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital a 35% equity stake in NABEP’s corporate parent. It also said the company granted the State Department unusually broad rights over future production. “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 …” the fact sheet said.

According to the White House, the State Department also received a right of first refusal on the remaining 80% of output, meaning the U.S. government would get the first chance to buy that oil before others. The fact sheet said the U.S. government has veto power over board appointments, that a majority of NABEP’s board must be U.S. citizens, and that the agreement is governed by U.S. law and subject to U.S. courts. The administration tied the off-take rights directly to energy security, saying the arrangement could help refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the U.S. emergency oil stockpile.

A key discrepancy emerged almost immediately. Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s acting president, described the arrangement publicly as a 25-year project, not a 100-year concession, and said it would bring $100 billion in investment and $209 billion in taxes over 25 years.

“Having subterranean resources is not enough. We need investment, technology, infrastructure, productive capacity to transform that wealth into well-being for our people,” Rodríguez said in public remarks cited in reporting.

That 25-year description conflicts directly with the White House’s repeated reference to 100-year concessions. As of Sept. 1, the documents that could resolve the difference were not public, according to Reuters, AP and other outlets that reviewed what had been released.

NABEP, in a Sept. 1 statement on its website, celebrated the agreement and echoed the administration’s description. The Barbados-headquartered company, which says it has offices in Caracas, Maracaibo and Lechería and identifies Alejandro Betancourt as its chief executive, said it had invested $1 billion in Venezuela and increased production to 200,000 barrels per day from about 18,000 barrels per day. Those figures are company claims. For broader context, Venezuela produced about 1.1 million barrels per day in July 2026, according to OPEC data cited in reporting.

The legal backdrop is a Jan. 29, 2026, reform approved by Venezuela’s National Assembly that expanded room for private-sector participation in the oil industry. That change is widely seen as the framework for larger private concessions than were possible under earlier rules.

Even so, independent analysts quickly raised questions about how the reported terms fit with Venezuelan law and past practice. Francisco Rodríguez, an energy economist and professor at the University of Denver, said Venezuelan law requires oil-field offers to go through competitive bidding and said the reported duration would be extraordinary.

“The 100-year concessions granted by the Venezuelan government are twice as long as the longest concessions ever granted by the country since the start of oil exploitation,” Rodríguez said.

For now, the central fact is not only the scale of the arrangement the White House says it secured, but also the gap in the documentary record. The administration has publicly described a deal covering 17 fields, about 65 billion barrels of proven reserves, U.S. equity, preferential oil purchase rights and governance influence. But the contracts and Venezuelan legal texts underpinning those claims were still not public as of Sept. 1.