Trump's Venezuela Energy Gambit A 'Major Problem' For Europe

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

In the end, it happened as it had to: The United States will likely play a decisive role in the future development and marketing of Venezuela’s oil and gas reserves.

On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a corresponding deal on his Truth Social platform, describing it himself as "THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY." According to the U.S. president, the United States secured “majority U.S. control” over more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela, spread across 17 oil fields – and, as Trump emphasized, “at no cost to the American taxpayer.”

BREAKING NEWS: The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY! At my direction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, working closely with Highly Respected… pic.twitter.com/lLl44Fp7cs

— Commentary Donald J. Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) August 28, 2026

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves. The overwhelming majority, however, consists of extra-heavy and heavy crude, which must be diluted and processed through an elaborate procedure. Particularly in Texas, there is refinery capacity specifically designed for this type of processing – a circumstance that further reinforces America’s role as the world’s largest oil producer. Around 20 percent of the world’s oil reserves are located in Venezuelan territory, making the country the largest member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, in terms of reserves.

OPEC is entering one of its most severe phases of erosion as a result of the agreement with the United States: In April, the United Arab Emirates had already announced its withdrawal from the cartel, effective May 1 – now Venezuela, a second founding member dating back to 1960, threatens to undermine the cartel’s common production logic. The agreement was negotiated with the Washington-backed transitional government under President Delcy Rodríguez in Caracas. Rodríguez, a former vice president of the country, is serving as interim president after Nicolás Maduro was arrested by U.S. special forces in January 2026 and taken to the United States, where he has been held ever since on drug-related charges.

What could the deal look like in practice? Little is known, but it can be assumed that the United States will establish a special-purpose company with participation from major oil producers such as ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips or Chevron, the only U.S. company with an operational presence in the country. The agreement still rests on shaky constitutional ground, however, since the Venezuelan constitution requires state control over the core activities of the oil industry. Will Caracas therefore first have to reform its laws?

Economically, the project sounds interesting. According to Rodríguez, the agreement is expected to initiate around $100 billion in investment in Venezuela’s oil sector. Caracas will also benefit: Over the 25-year term of the agreement, the country expects at least $209 billion in tax revenues – a gigantic leap forward, considering that the socialists under Maduro had also run this crucial economic sector into the ground, turning it into a self-service machine of corruption and cronyism.

The decision was announced just weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit, which is expected to take place in Washington on September 24. Xi therefore faces a fait accompli: The two important sources of oil for China – Venezuela and now Iran as well – appear to be blocked and are coming under U.S. political control. Donald Trump is thus creating facts in the rivalry between the two superpowers – control over oil is a bargaining chip, measured in millions of barrels of daily oil production.

With regard to the conflict with China and the increasingly difficult relationship with the EU, Trump’s geopolitics follows the logic of the sledgehammer: America First, debates are unwelcome. One can criticize this strategy; one may even have to. However, in order to obtain a complete picture, one should view the events from the American perspective: Until the energy-policy shift, the deregulation of fossil fuels and the unleashing of the fossil resources available in the United States, EU climate policy dominated in Washington. Above all, it was Barack Obama who, in 2009, submitted to the CO₂ diktat of ideological desk-bound technocrats from Davos, Brussels and Berlin. Since Trump’s return to the White House, the motto has been: Drill, Baby, Drill – now also by means of a state agreement covering Venezuela’s oil and gas fields.

The United States divides the world into Manichean categories – those who stand by its side are good, whether in the conflict with Iran, in gaining access to Greenland’s rare earths, or in removing the dictator Maduro in Venezuela. Those who refuse to submit are bad. The European Union undoubtedly belongs to the latter category and is increasingly perceived in Washington as an enemy.

For the EU, which is heavily dependent on energy imports, Trump’s aggressive energy policy could become a major problem.

Having fallen out with Russia and virtually powerless in the face of the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, Europe is dependent on American liquefied natural gas supplies. This is precisely why the question must be asked: What prevents Europeans from activating their own energy reserves? A rhetorical question: Brussels and Berlin have become trapped in ideological delusion and in the hope that the specter in the White House will be gone again in two and a half years and that they can return to business as usual. In this case, “business as usual” means that the United States will once again submit to European climate rules as it did before.

But that is still a long way off.

And the role of the eternal childish antagonist does not suit the Germans particularly well. Destructive climate and energy policy, whose provisional climax will be the flooding of the coal mines of the Ruhr region, appears childish in an international context – economically, it is simply a catastrophe. All of this weighs heavily – it burdens the country’s political culture, it tears its economy apart and exposes the ever-deeper divide between citizens and politics. In retrospect, it proves tragic that the country’s decisive affairs of state, its energy policy and the economy in general were placed in the hands of left-green degrowth fanatics and socialists.

It is hardly surprising that the path to the future technology of nuclear power appears blocked, and that no one dares to pursue fracking or the development of Germany’s own gas fields in the North and Baltic Seas. The country is intellectually and ideologically paralyzed and is now paying the economic price for its pre-Enlightenment ideology.