White House details Venezuela oil deal giving Pentagon a 35% stake in new venture

The White House on Tuesday filled in the structure of the Venezuela oil agreement President Trump announced last week, disclosing that the Pentagon will hold a 35% ownership stake in the private venture that would control a fifth of Venezuela's proven oil reserves.

Under the arrangement, Venezuela's government has granted 100-year concessions covering 17 oil fields containing roughly 65 billion barrels of reserves to a joint venture built around North American Blue Energy Partners, or NABEP, a company controlled by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt. Many of the fields were previously operated by Russian and Chinese firms or by figures tied to former presidents Nicolás Maduro and Hugo Chávez, according to a White House fact sheet.

Beyond the Pentagon's equity stake, the State Department will have the right to buy 20% of the venture's output at cost, plus first refusal on the remainder. NABEP has committed to invest up to $100 billion in Venezuelan oil infrastructure and projects it will pay roughly $200 billion in royalties and taxes to Caracas over the first 25 years. The White House said the deal would come "at zero cost" to US taxpayers and that Washington would retain veto power over the venture's board, which it said would be majority American.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed the agreement on the US side. NABEP's Betancourt said the deal would "unleash that potential to the great benefit of both Venezuelans and Americans," while acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, who has led the government since Maduro was captured by US forces in a January narcoterrorism operation, has backed the arrangement as a path to rebuilding the country's battered oil sector.

The deal drew immediate criticism from congressional Democrats. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called it "a blatant abuse of power and taxpayer dollars," arguing that turning the US military into a direct investor in a foreign oil venture blurs the line between national security and commercial interest. Energy analysts quoted in NPR's reporting cautioned the project still carries substantial political and operational risk and could take years to meaningfully lift output, given the poor state of Venezuela's oil infrastructure after decades of underinvestment.

The administration has cast the deal as central to its energy strategy, arguing that new Venezuelan supply could help ease gasoline prices at home. Al Jazeera noted that key details, including the identity of eventual private co-investors and how the venture's board seats will be allocated, remain unresolved even after Tuesday's disclosures.

NABEP is already Venezuela's second-largest oil operator behind Chevron, giving Betancourt's company existing infrastructure and personnel on the ground that could speed development compared with a newcomer. Venezuela holds the world's largest proven crude reserves, but decades of underinvestment, sanctions and the exodus of skilled engineers under Chavez and Maduro left output a fraction of its potential. Administration officials argue the venture's scale and long concession window are designed to attract the capital needed to reverse that decline, though independent oil analysts caution that restoring aging wells and pipelines to full capacity typically takes years even with adequate funding in place.