The White House has detailed a 100-year arrangement giving the United States long-term access to Venezuela’s oil through a private company, North American Blue Energy Partners. Run by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, the firm has received drilling rights across seventeen oil fields containing an estimated 65 billion barrels of crude. Under the agreement, the US Defense Department receives a 35 percent ownership stake, and the State Department gains the right to buy a fifth of the output at production cost along with first refusal on the rest. The company plans to invest up to 100 billion dollars to upgrade infrastructure and increase output from about 200,000 barrels a day to over a million.
The deal follows the January removal of Nicolas Maduro and the establishment of an interim government led by Delcy Rodriguez, who has described the core terms as spanning twenty-five years. The administration promotes the agreement to stabilize global energy supply and refill the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. However, critics have pushed back, with a senior Democratic senator calling the Pentagon’s equity stake a troubling use of military authority, while Venezuelan opposition voices view the arrangement as an asset grab. Independent analysts also caution that the heavy, sulfur-rich crude requires specialized refining capacity, meaning any effect on US gasoline prices will take time.