U.S. Rep. Debbi Wasserman Schultz said on Monday that the recent U.S.-Venezuela oil deal needs to be halted.
Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez announced a “historic” 25-year deal on Saturday night and said it would increase output to 1.5 million barrels per day.
President Donald Trump announced the “biggest oil deal in world history” on Friday on Truth Social, and credited Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“Trump and Marco Rubio have intentionally left everything opaque ... Trump did remove Maduro so he could get control over Venezuela’s oil and line his billionaire buddies’ pockets,” Wasserman Schultz said. “That’s what this is all about.”
Officials have not publicly identified the private Venezuelan operator involved in the deal, which reportedly includes 17 oil fields in the Orinoco Belt and Lake Maracaibo.
“The U.S. is going to take a 35% passive stake in a private company that is run by a Venezuelan who has done some deals for oil in Venezuela before, and ultimately that would give them preferential rights to buy about 20% of the production that comes from these investments at cost,” Ellen Wald, the president and founder of Transversal Consulting and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center, told Bloomberg on Monday.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that the parties involved were the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital and billionaire Alejandro Betancourt, of North American Blue Energy Partners, or NABEP, a production company.
Betancourt, 46, also known as Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt López, was the subject of investigations on money laundering in the U.S., Switzerland, and Spain, The Washington Post reported last week. U.S. federal prosecutors dropped a case against him in 2020. He has previously denied wrongdoing.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance defended the joint venture.
“We are going to see a significant increase in production,” Vance said. “The $65 billion barrel reserve is a big part of that.”
Officials plan to sign agreements with U.S. companies next week. Francisco R. Rodríguez, an economist and senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said the oil deals will “make Venezuela a subordinate state to the U.S.”
Market experts did not expect the deal to have an immediate impact on U.S. consumers’ gas prices.
“Sounds promising, but it still will take billions of investment to get that oil,” Patrick De Haan, an analyst with Gas Buddy, wrote on Sunday on X.
Wasserman Schultz, who is campaigning for Florida’s 20th Congressional District, said that if she is elected on Nov. 3, she will be part of an effort by Democrats to stop the deal.
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- What we know about Trump’s deal giving US access to vast oil reserves in Venezuela
- Trump says US has entered deal with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels of oil reserves
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