President Donald Trump announced Friday night that Washington and Caracas have finalized what he called "the biggest oil deal in world history," a public-private arrangement giving the United States majority control over oil assets holding roughly 65 billion barrels in crude reserves. The announcement, posted to Truth Social, marks the most dramatic step yet in eight months of expanding U.S. involvement in Venezuela's energy sector since American forces captured former President Nicolás Maduro on January 3. By the weekend, the deal had already drawn protests in Caracas and a public dispute between the two governments over one of its most basic terms: how long it actually lasts.
The mechanics behind the "biggest oil deal in world history"
Under the arrangement, Washington and a still-unnamed private operator formed a joint venture holding equity in a cluster of Venezuelan oil fields rather than buying the reserves outright. One U.S. official, speaking with CBS News, said the venture would rank behind only Saudi Aramco among corporate holders of proven oil reserves worldwide, with Washington's share split between direct equity ownership and crude priced at production cost -- an effective 55 percent stake in the venture's output. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez's government has said the arrangement covers 17 fields, an investment pipeline exceeding $100 billion, and projected tax revenue north of $209 billion for the Venezuelan treasury. Secretary of State Marco Rubio ran point on the U.S. side of the talks together with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and called the agreement "a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people." Neither government has released the underlying contract, and neither has named which private companies will actually operate the fields -- though only a small handful of foreign majors, including Chevron, Repsol and Eni, have kept any presence in Venezuela at all in recent years, making them the most obvious candidates.
A deal in dispute over its own terms
The clearest sign of how unsettled the agreement remains surfaced a day later, when Rodríguez gave her own account of it during a nighttime appearance on Venezuelan state television. U.S. officials had described the fields as handed over on a 100-year concession. Rodríguez described something narrower: "This 25-year bilateral project," she said, tied to a production target above 1.5 million barrels a day. She added that Venezuela keeps ownership of its resources and simply supplies the oil, the industry, and the workforce, while Washington supplies capital and technology.
The gap between the two figures lines up with a wrinkle in Venezuelan law that predates the deal. The country overhauled its hydrocarbons statute in January, and that law, according to an analysis of the reformed text, limits a mixed operating company's term to 25 years on paper, with room for a single 15-year extension -- a ceiling nowhere near the century-long figure U.S. officials floated. Rodríguez's 25-year framing tracks the statute; the American account does not. Which number ends up governing the actual contract, once released, is likely to determine whether the deal survives a future Venezuelan government intact or becomes vulnerable to exactly the kind of legal challenge that sank earlier concession models in the region.
Political fallout in Washington and Caracas
The dispute over terms is only part of the pushback. Protesters gathered in Caracas over the weekend against a deal critics say was struck without the public's input. Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann, who once served as Venezuela's planning minister, dismissed it on social media as a "shameful deal" and argued that Rodríguez lacks the constitutional standing to bind the country to an arrangement of this size. In Washington, Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen said flatly that the agreement "isn't a win," framing it instead as a giveaway secured through a military operation that put American troops at risk. Congress' formal role, if any, is still undefined, though lawmakers in both parties have already started weighing in publicly.
Some analysts see a domestic upside for Rodríguez in all of this: locking in a marquee economic win with Washington could ease pressure on her government to schedule the elections the opposition has been demanding since Maduro's fall, even as it draws fire from hard-liners loyal to the old government and from the opposition alike.
That goodwill has not erased skepticism. Weeks into Rodríguez's government, exile voices gathered by South Florida's WLRN described conflicting emotions -- relief that Maduro is gone, unease that Washington chose to work with his former deputy instead of dismantling his political network outright. Miami Beach-based consultant Beatrice Rangel summed up the doubt bluntly: "There's going to be no transition." That tension is likely to sharpen now that the oil deal has drawn open criticism from within Venezuela itself, since it deepens U.S. involvement with a government still staffed largely by Maduro-era officials.
Where Machado fits
A confirmed U.S. ownership stake also cements, at least for now, the arrangement Washington has favored since January: working with Rodríguez's government rather than opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate María Corina Machado. Speaking from Panama in May, Machado said she intends to return to Venezuela and run for president again before this year is out, telling reporters, "I will be a candidate, but there may be others, of course." Rodríguez has said Machado would have to explain herself to the country over her past calls for foreign intervention and sanctions if she comes home -- a warning that predates the oil deal but takes on new weight now that Rodríguez has an economic win of her own to point to.
For Venezuelan-American voters in South Florida who backed Machado's opposition movement, an energy pact struck directly with Rodríguez's administration, and now also disputed by Rodríguez's own domestic critics, may read as Washington placing commercial certainty ahead of the democratic transition many in Doral have been waiting years to see.
Neither government has released the underlying agreement, and basic questions -- its actual duration, which private companies are involved, and whether Congress gets any formal say -- remain open even after a weekend of competing claims from Washington and Caracas alike.
