Trump: Us Will Sell 50 Million Barrels Of Venezuelan Oil

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Venezuela’s interim government would be “turning over” billions of dollars worth of sanctioned crude oil to the United States, just days after it toppled leader Nicolás Maduro.

The U.S. plans to sell the oil — between 30 and 50 million barrels — at market prices, Trump said in a Truth Social post, adding that he would personally control the proceeds to ensure they are being used to “benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.”

Trump said he was directing Energy Secretary Chris Wright to arrange the plan “immediately” and that the sanctioned crude would be “brought directly to unloading docks in the United States.”

The move comes as Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, is seeking to stabilize the volatile nation while managing a barrage of demands from Trump.

A U.S. naval blockade has choked off most of Venezuela’s oil exports in recent weeks, threatening a key source of its revenue. Much of that crude was intended to go to China but is now accumulating in storage tanks and tankers anchored in port.

So much of Venezuela’s crude had been sanctioned and building up in storage facilities that it threatened to force the country to start shutting in production, market analysts said. Initial calculations put the worth of the oil at up to $2.5 billion, Rory Johnston, an oil analyst who writes the newsletter Commodity Context, said in an email.

“This likely represents most of the barrels that have built up during the blockade, both [on] ships and in overflowing domestic storage—relieving this will alleviate the building pressure to shut-in upstream production,” Johnston said. “I still have so many questions about how exactly this is being handled and under which legal authorities.”

The United States made a similar sale of sanctioned crude in 2020, when it sold four tankers seized from Iran. In that case, the money went to a fund to help victims of state-sponsored terrorism.

Trump did not provide a timeline for the sales, but adding 30 to 50 million barrels of supply could be a shock to U.S. markets, which are already well-supplied amid record domestic production. The U.S. imported around 5.8 million barrels of oil in October, the last month for which data is available.

In the first 10 months of 2025, the U.S. imported approximately 40 million barrels from Venezuela, said Pavel Molchanov, energy industry analyst at Raymond James.

“In principle, it would be possible to accelerate the pace of imports, but bringing in 30 to 50 million barrels would still require a period of months,” Molchanov said.

Venezuelan crude is heavy and sour, meaning it can only be processed in certain refineries, mostly along the Gulf Coast. The sudden import into the United States of that much heavy Venezuelan oil could displace imports from another major source of a similar type of crude — Canada.

“Venezuela crude would directly compete with Canadian crude coming down the pipeline,“ said Andrew Lipow, head of oil market consulting firm Lipow Oil Associates.