‘who Knows If It Will Survive’: Experts Question How Long Trump’s Venezuela Oil Deal Will Last

Oil company executives and Venezuela experts are looking skeptically at the Trump administration’s $100 billion plan to boost Venezuelan oil production, raising questions about whether the deal will yield significant oil any time soon — or ever.

Under the deal the White House announced Monday, the United States would receive a 35 percent stake in oil company North American Blue Energy Partners to drill for oil in Venezuela, the latest instance of the Trump administration taking shares in a private business. As part of the deal, the U.S. would have “preferential access” to 20 percent of the oil the company produces at cost.

The partnership, if successful, would kickstart oil production in Venezuela, something President Donald Trump has wanted since his administration plucked Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power in January. Trump and the GOP are promoting increased imports of Venezuelan crude into the United States as a possible balm for the high fuel prices that have plagued voters since the U.S. launched its attacks against Iran in late February.

Oil executives are warning, however, that the fields targeted for production will take years to develop and expressed little confidence that the White House announced with a company few are familiar with would lead to much.

“Fuck all, what is this?” said an executive at one oil company granted anonymity to speak frankly about the administration’s plans. “This thing is way too big for a company with no capabilities and no credibility.”

Some in Caracas, too, said the Trump administration’s support should extend to a wider range of firms, especially smaller operators.

“Investing in one company could be a starting point, but I think it needs a bigger approach,” said Alejandro Sucre, a Caracas-based investor who is pitching a fund backing oil and mining projects in Venezuela. “You’re not gonna give 65 billion barrels of reserves to one company, right? That doesn’t make any sense.”

It’s not just industry officials expressing doubt. Giving the U.S. ownership of an asset seen as a national treasure is already drawing heat from across the political spectrum, according to Liliana Diaz, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

“The criticism is arriving from opposite directions,” Diaz said. ”Hardliners object on sovereignty over the resource. The opposition objects on constitutional legitimacy. Something attacked from both flanks at once tends not to last, whatever its economics.”

NABEP has become one of the largest private operators in Venezuela in recent years. The agreement gives the Barbados-based company the right to develop 65 billion barrels of crude across 17 Venezuelan fields and includes a near-term goal of increasing production to more than 1 million barrels a day.

“Venezuela is blessed with an abundance of natural resources, hardworking people and untapped potential,” CEO Alejandro Betancourt said in a statement announcing the deal.

Betancourt also praised Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and one person familiar with the discussions granted anonymity to discuss private talks said Betancourt and Rubio, as well as Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez were all involved in the initial negotiations.

The Pentagon was brought in later to provide funding, this person added. “In the end they needed financing — that’s why they went to the Pentagon,” this person said. “This was sold to the Pentagon on the basis that some of this oil would go to the US SPR, therefore it’s going to be a net benefit to U.S. national security.”

Betancourt’s involvement is also raising concerns. A massive money-laundering investigation spanning several countries has dogged him, and the Washington Post reported the U.S. had intervened on a Swiss arrest warrant to allow him to travel to negotiate the deal.

Orlando Peréz, a professor at the University of North Texas at Dallas who studies Venezuela, said Betancourt is viewed in the country as a “bolichico,” the name for a group of young businessmen who profited from government connections during the Chavista regime.

“Does a future U.S. administration continue to protect Betancourt? I doubt it. Particularly if it’s a Democrat administration,” Peréz said.

A U.S. official, speaking to reporters Tuesday on condition of anonymity to detail the deal, said Betancourt is facing no charges in the U.S. and many of the European investigations stemmed from U.S. allegations that are no longer being pursued.

“I’m not nominating anyone for sainthood here. What I am telling you is that this is a person that, in the past, has been helpful to the United States government,” the official said, citing Betancourt’s support for opposition leader Juan Guaidó, whose government was recognized by the U.S. as the interim authorities in Venezuela in 2019.

The Trump administration saw Betancourt as one of the only proven private operators in Venezuela, other than Chevron, who had managed to keep its fields producing under the Maduro regime, the official said. The deal also prevents the fields from falling into the hands of Russian and Chinese companies, the official added.

Still, the fields themselves are also raising eyebrows in the oil industry. About half of the fields covered by the deal are in the country’s Orinoco Belt, hundreds of miles from the coast, and lack sufficient infrastructure to bring its extra-heavy crude to market.

Evanan Romero, a former executive at Venezuela’s state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela and Houston-based oil consultant, said industry officials have generally regarded those fields as not economic until the 22nd century.

“There are no economics to develop that right now,” said Romero, who was involved in the Trump administration’s early efforts to bring U.S. oil producers back to Venezuela last year.

Romero added that other fields covered by the deal in Venezuela’s east, around Lake Maracaibo, are largely “depleted” and lack electricity and pipeline infrastructure to expand production without major investment.

Another oil industry executive familiar with the fields that Venezuela has offered to Betancourt’s company said it would take “a decade at minimum and hundreds of billions of dollars to connect those reserves to market.”

“They appear to be either [undeveloped] sites that have no electricity or infrastructure, or they are fields that are deemed to be mature and not something a company like ours would find attractive for further investment,” said this person, who was granted anonymity to discuss the administration’s plans.

“If the administration has in fact done this [deal], and the U.S. has rights to 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan crude, that’s a good thing, that’s historic, that’s laudable,” this person said. “But it’s not really impactful in the short term or anything other than aspiration.”

Industry executives are also raising issues ranging from the quality of the oilfields Venezuela offered for the venture, the amount of time and money needed to get oil flowing in a country that recently suffered a massive earthquake and whether the deal itself was actually legal.

The timeline for the deal also appears to be in question. The White House fact sheet lists the Venezuelan government as offering 100 years of access to the oil fields. Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez, however, said the leases would last 25 years.

Details like that — and how exactly the Pentagon would make the investment — still seem fluid, said Jim Reardon, who co-leads the Venezuela practice at law firm Nelson Mullins. Trump’s assertion that the United States would take 20 percent of the crude oil produced to put into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — something analysts said would be technically unlikely, given the chemical mismatch between sludgy Venezuelan crude and the type the SPR is meant to hold — could also scare away any other potential investors in the project, Reardon said.

“Trump is going to take 20 percent of production for the SPR, so right there you’re paying a gross 20 percent royalty to the US government,” he said. “Then you’ll have to pay something to the Venezuelan government. Are you going to make any profit at the end of the day? Who’s going to take the risk?”

The deal has drawn measured praise from some involved in the investment push in Venezuela.

Joseph Hernandez, the CEO of Blue Water Acquisition Corp. IV, which is exploring oil investments in the country, said a deal with the backing of the U.S. government could “give other investors confidence to follow.”

But Venezuelans “must participate in the upside,” rather than allowing companies to extract resources and take profits overseas, Hernandez said. “Done responsibly, private capital doesn’t weaken Venezuela — it strengthens the country, expands opportunity and helps Venezuelans rebuild their economy.”