President Trump announced a deal Friday that hands the U.S. majority control over Venezuela’s oil — 65 billion barrels of proven reserves — and he’s promising it will bring gas prices down.
The timing isn’t subtle. Gas is averaging $4.08 a gallon nationally, up from $3.20 a year ago, as the Iran war keeps squeezing global energy markets.
Here’s the deal: a new private company will manage output from 17 Venezuelan oil fields, and the U.S. gets a 55% cut of whatever comes out of the ground. Washington also gets to buy Venezuelan crude at cost — a real advantage, if the oil ever starts flowing in volume.
That’s the catch.
Most of that 65 billion barrels stays untouched for now. Getting Venezuela’s oil sector back on its feet will take years and billions in investment, according to experts cited by the Associated Press.
Rystad Energy projected in July that production could climb 17% by 2028 — but only with a serious ramp-up in drilling, equipment, and infrastructure.
The oil itself is another challenge.
Venezuelan crude is thick, heavy stuff — S&P Global once compared its consistency to asphalt — and it needs lighter hydrocarbons blended in just to move through a pipeline. None of that happens overnight.
Washington has been burned by optimism here before. When the Biden administration eased sanctions in 2023, the U.S. Energy Information Administration warned that years of neglect and mismanagement would cap any recovery.
Trump’s team is wagering that American money and American management can finally turn Venezuela’s oil industry around. Trump himself said Friday the agreement would boost U.S. oil supply and “substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future.”
It may be a long game — but for the first time in years, someone’s actually playing to win it.
