Inside the U.S. Deal to Get Venezuela’s Oil

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:05)
On Friday night, President Trump took to Truth Social with a surprising announcement. He said that the US and Venezuela had just agreed to, quote, the biggest oil deal in world history.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:17)
Breaking news tonight, President Trump boasting of a huge oil deal on social media.

**Vera Bergengruen** (0:22)
In fact, no one believed that this was happening. We were all really, really surprised when this came out.

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:30)
Our colleague Vera Bergengruen covers national security.

**Vera Bergengruen** (0:33)
So we've been hearing rumblings that there was some kind of major oil deal about to be announced. We thought it was going to be oil companies or something new on that front. But what it basically ended up being was a very, very unusual deal announced by President Trump, that the US government itself was going to be taking a stake in the oil business in Venezuela.
Venezuela is giving a private company the rights to develop these enormous oil fields, and the US government itself, through the Pentagon, is taking a stake in that company. So they basically are themselves becoming an investor in Venezuelan oil.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:10)
And that's highly unusual.

**Vera Bergengruen** (1:12)
Yes, this has never really been tried before. And again, the mechanism through which it's being done through the Pentagon also is something that people were very, very surprised by.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:26)
The oil deal comes at a sensitive time for the Trump administration. As the war in Iran drags on, gas prices stay high, and voters get ready to go to the polls.

**Vera Bergengruen** (1:38)
And from my conversations with people involved in this, the Trump administration is really trying to use this as a hedge against the chaos in the Middle East because of Trump's decision to go to war with Iran.
And Trump has said that he's going to use this oil to refill the US strategic petroleum reserve and have all these grand plans. But most of this is not going to happen until way after he's out of office.

**Jessica Mendoza** (2:03)
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Tuesday, September 1st.
Coming up on the show, Trump's unusual deal to get Venezuelan oil.

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**Jessica Mendoza** (4:03)
Venezuela is home to the world's largest oil reserves. The country says it has some 300 billion barrels of proven reserves. By comparison, the US has an estimated 46 billion barrels.
The Trump administration has had its eye on Venezuela's oil for a long time.

**Vera Bergengruen** (4:25)
So the president And even... before he decided to take out Nicolás Maduro, was talking about how one of his biggest interests in this country was the oil, and securing a reliable source of crude in the Western Hemisphere, especially as things in the Middle East are very unstable on and off.

**Jessica Mendoza** (4:43)
After Maduro's ouster in January, he was replaced by Delci Rodriguez, his vice president. That same week, Trump gathered American oil executives at the White House and pressured them to start drilling.

**Donald Trump** (4:56)
I'm delighted to welcome almost two dozen of the biggest and most respected oil and gas executives in the world to the White House.