Besides a social media post from President Donald Trump, the White House has said little about what he is calling “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” in Venezuela. Trump said the agreement announced Friday night would give the United States a stake in Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, a step toward his goal of extracting energy from the country after American forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro in a middle-of-the-night raid in January and brought him to New York to face federal drug trafficking charges.
Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, described the deal as a step toward economic recovery that will modernize the country’s oil industry. In a televised address to the nation late Sunday, Rodríguez insisted Venezuela’s sovereignty is secure and said she wants the country to become a global energy powerhouse. Earlier on Saturday, she said the oil reserves would “cease to be an inert, cold statistic and will instead become concrete solutions. Housing is one of them.” But the answers to many questions, including how soon the reserves could be drilled and who will pay to make it happen, were not immediately clear. No text of any agreement has been released.
