{"id":225776,"date":"2026-09-27T22:33:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T22:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/the-truth-behind-donald-trumps-biggest-oil-deal-in-world-history-trump-administration-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T22:33:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T22:33:15","slug":"the-truth-behind-donald-trumps-biggest-oil-deal-in-world-history-trump-administration-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/the-truth-behind-donald-trumps-biggest-oil-deal-in-world-history-trump-administration-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"The truth behind Donald Trump\u2019s \u2018biggest oil deal in world history\u2019 | Trump administration – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US\u2019s oil deal with Venezuela faces multiple legal and logistical problems, including questions about whether it can be implemented
D<\/span>onald Trump has long coveted the oilfields of other nations and declared an agreement with Venezuela to be \u201cthe biggest oil deal in world history\u201d. But the agreement, reached after the US seized Venezuelan president Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>, is almost certainly doomed to collapse amid a wide array of legal and logistical issues, a Guardian investigation has found.
The US president first mused about taking oil from Iran in 1987, when he told<\/a> ABC\u2019s Barbara Walters that Iranian attacks on American shipping during the Iran-Iraq war required an extreme response. \u201cWhy couldn\u2019t we go in and take over some of their oil, which is along the sea?\u201d he asked. Over the ensuing years, he has returned frequently to the idea that the US should seize oil from other countries after military conflict, from Libya to Iraq.
Earlier this year, Trump finally got a chance to enact his plan \u2013 at gunpoint. US forces stormed Venezuela<\/a> in January and seized Maduro, who was quickly shuttled to a federal holding facility in the US and replaced by the compliant Delcy Rodr\u00edguez. Trump told the Atlantic in the days following the raid: \u201cIf [Rodr\u00edguez] doesn\u2019t do what\u2019s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.\u201d
Then in August, Trump announced that the office of strategic capital (OSC) at the Pentagon, which he has rapidly transformed<\/a>, would own a third of the second-biggest<\/a> private Venezuelan oil firm, North American Blue Energy Partners (Nabep). Trump said the deal means he\u2019ll soon refill the US strategic petroleum reserve, which dropped to a longtime low after the US invaded Iran.
But virtually everything Trump and his cabinet have said about the deal is false and misleading, according to the experts and officials who spoke with the Guardian. The Venezuelan law governing oil development does not allow for 100-year deals, or anything longer than 25 years. The OSC isn\u2019t authorized by US law, experts say, to own shares in companies. Moreover, they say, the deal as structured won\u2019t bring new capital to Venezuela\u2019s oil sector.
And contrary to Trump\u2019s claims, the Venezuelan oil will not help refill the US strategic petroleum reserve any time in the near future.
There is also a curious figure at the center of the deal: Alejandro Betancourt L\u00f3pez, the affable Venezuelan with a complex background who is becoming a partner of the US government as the owner of Nabep.
Betancourt, 46, went to college in Massachusetts and has homes in Spain, the UK and New York City. He has a history in Venezuela\u2019s energy and oil sector, owns a sunglasses company<\/a> and once had Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer.
Betancourt, who has been drawn into multiple international investigations<\/a> in connection with Venezuelan corruption allegations, was brought into the deal by a private associate of Marco Rubio, according to three people who know him. Betancourt has never been charged with or convicted of any crime.
The Guardian has learned that Venezuelan government officials who are now in charge once hired investigators and hackers to dig into the source of Betancourt\u2019s money.
Experts are ultimately skeptical the oil deal can hold together. <\/strong>\u201cThe deal is like the big beautiful wall that Mexico will pay for,\u201d said former US diplomat John Feeley.
It was less than a month after the January US raid that toppled Maduro that Exxon\u2019s CEO, Darren Woods, said the country was \u201cuninvestable\u201d because of the \u201clegal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today\u201d.
Two people familiar with the process said Trump began looking for a way to make sure the US had \u201cskin in the game\u201d \u2013 financial ownership that would put investors at ease. The potential answer became the US stake in Betancourt\u2019s firm, North American Blue Energy Partners.
Though the White House and defense department say it has 35% ownership, the Pentagon told lawmakers on the congressional armed services committee in a written briefing seen by the Guardian it has \u201cwarrants\u201d in Nabep: rights to purchase shares, rather than the shares themselves.
The state department, the administration says, will also have a right to buy 20% of all the oil Nabep pumps, at cost \u2013 meaning it should be able to buy it cheaper than the market price.
\u201cThe Departments of State and War have negotiated a historic opportunity to secure US majority control of more than 65bn barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela at zero taxpayer cost,\u201d a Pentagon spokesperson said.
It\u2019s unclear how the US would buy crude oil, or what the process would be. The state department, for its part, insists: \u201cThis is a private deal with a private company. It\u2019s not a deal with the interim government of Venezuela and there was not a political process included in the negotiations.\u201d
That appears to be at odds with Trump\u2019s initial announcement, which said: \u201cThe United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela.\u201d The administration says a majority of the board of Nabep, which is incorporated in Barbados, will be US citizens.
The Pentagon ownership has been one of the most puzzling parts of the deal, because the idea that the Department of Defense could own more than a third of a Venezuelan oil company, or any oil company, would have been unthinkable in any previous US administration. Prior to Trump, the defense department had never operated like a private equity fund that could directly own percentages of foreign companies.
But the Pentagon has been transformed. The OSC is under the authority of the deputy defense secretary, Stephen Feinberg, a powerful billionaire who wields the real financial power in the Pentagon and has surrounded himself with former employees from the private equity giant Cerberus, as the Guardian has reported<\/a>. Feinberg installed a former Cerberus employee, David Lorch, as the head of the OSC.
The Trump administration<\/a> is using a 1950s law called the Defense Production Act to allow the Pentagon to become a kind of giant investment fund. \u201cIt has turned them into a vehicle for ownership of substantial domestic and international companies,\u201d said the former official.
A former Pentagon official familiar with the project said Feinberg and Lorch structured the financial end of Trump\u2019s Venezuela deal. \u201cIt is absolutely a Feinberg project,\u201d said the former Pentagon official.
However, the law that created the OSC actually didn\u2019t authorize it to make equity investments, and the Pentagon\u2019s spokesperson told Reuters<\/a>: \u201cThe Office of \u200bStrategic Capital (OSC) \u2060does not take equity stakes in private companies\u201d in August.
\u201cCongress clearly doesn\u2019t believe that it has given the power to OSC to make equity investments,\u201d said Ashley Deeks, the vice-dean of the University of Virginia law school, who has written about US government ownership stakes in companies for the Harvard National Security Journal<\/a>.
Since the OSC is not authorized to invest in shares of private companies, the Nabep ownership will be held by an entirely different Pentagon office, called Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment<\/a> (Ibas), according to the former Pentagon official.
But the mission of Ibas has nothing to do with oil. Its job, as it says on its website, is solely to \u201cstrengthen the US Defense Industrial Base\u201d.
That incongruity is just one of the reasons major oil companies and investors privately say they are keeping clear of this deal, said Phil Gunson of the International Crisis Group, who has been briefed on the problem. \u201cThey are concerned about the irregularities. They are concerned about the terms of the deal. It\u2019s the opacity of the agreement that has serious investors concerned,\u201d he said.
\u201cWhether the Pentagon has the authority to act in this way is debatable,\u201d he added.
The White House directed questions about whether the OSC is authorized to own shares to the defense department. The department didn\u2019t answer emailed questions about the matter. In a statement, a representative merely repeated some prior claims by the administration: it\u2019s a \u201chistoric opportunity\u201d, with control over most of Venezuela\u2019s oil reserves.
The length of the deal also doesn\u2019t appear to be as long as the administration claims. <\/strong>Venezuelan legal expert Jose Ignacio Hern\u00e1ndez says Venezuelan law is crystal clear that this is impossible, and Venezuela\u2019s government itself has said the deal is for 25 years, not 100.
\u201cThis is all just propaganda,\u201d said Ignacio Hern\u00e1ndez. \u201cIt cannot be implemented as announced by the administration.\u201d
Those who have met Alejandro Betancourt say he is remarkably pleasant and obliging. \u201cHe was a really nice guy,\u201d says Lev Parnas, the former Giuliani associate who broke from Maga after his arrest in 2019, and who traveled with Betancourt. \u201cI don\u2019t like too many people but I like him, his wife, his family.\u201d
\u201cBetancourt, he\u2019s a good sales guy,\u201d said another American who has known him for years. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told an interviewer in early September that Betancourt had a \u201ctrack record\u201d of producing oil.
Some view him as an effective businessman who can deal with a variety of administrations and has experience both in energy and oil deals.
In 2012, Betancourt bought El Alam\u00edn castle in Spain, a vast estate with its own tennis court and soccer field, according to aerial photos. The castle has become a venue to host meetings with prominent business leaders and politicians, El Pa\u00eds reported<\/a>.
Betancourt has been a subject of scandal<\/a> for well over a decade. Public scrutiny<\/a> of him first emerged in the US in 2013, when a former US ambassador to Venezuela, Otto Reich, laid out a series of allegations in a civil lawsuit, including violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act, which targets organized crime, and defamation, in New York federal court. Along with his partners in a company called Derwick Associates, Betancourt made his money in building electrical plants in contracts he won by kickbacks, according to Reich\u2019s complaint. The Rico claims were dismissed when the court found that Reich failed to establish a legal \u201cpattern of racketeering\u201d, and the defamation claims were rejected for lack of jurisdiction.
In a letter to the Guardian, Betancourt\u2019s lawyer Vel Freedman wrote: \u201cNeither Derwick nor Mr Betancourt ever asked, directed, or encouraged anyone to pay a bribe.\u201d
In 2018, Betancourt\u2019s cousin, a business partner also affiliated with Derwick, was charged in a $1.2bn money-laundering case in federal court in Miami. An affidavit submitted by an agent with Homeland Security Investigations cited an unnamed \u201cconspirator 2\u201d, who he said received hundreds of millions in laundered funds with the cousin, who is still a fugitive in the case.
The Miami Herald reported<\/a> it was Betancourt. In a letter to the Guardian, Betancourt\u2019s lawyer wrote: \u201cMr Betancourt has never been charged with a crime in the United States. He has never been named as a defendant. The United States government has never sought his extradition, and the United States government has never publicly identified him as a target, as an unnamed co-conspirator, or as any numbered conspirator in any charging instrument.\u201d
Marco Rubio told a Venezuelan radio interviewer that Betancourt was not the subject of a US probe. \u201cThere was no investigation within our system against him.\u201d
In the height of Trump\u2019s first term, Betancourt hired Giuliani, then Trump\u2019s personal lawyer, as his own lawyer<\/a>.
His relationship with Venezuela\u2019s government has seesawed over the years. According to two people familiar with the situation, Venezuelan authorities were so concerned over allegations about Betancourt\u2019s finances that they hired a team of lawyers and investigators that began an intense investigation to try to track his money.
Betancourt\u2019s attorney said the businessman never misappropriated money.
The investigators hired by Venezuela even used hackers to try to trace his funds. A source familiar with the hacking project said their intrusion was extensive. \u201cHis WhatsApp,\u201d they said, \u201c\u2018His accountants, his lawyers, everything.\u201d
Corporate computer hacking <\/a>was a well-known investigative tool, though usually illegal, at the time. A 2021 document obtained by the Guardian, prepared by a group of hackers, shows a list of Venezuelan targets. It lists Betancourt as a \u201csecondary\u201d target.
Betancourt\u2019s lawyer didn\u2019t confirm the hacking, but he said that Betancourt was a major supporter of the interim opposition government backed by the US. If it happened, he said, any hacking effort \u201cbelongs in the context of Mr Betancourt\u2019s opposition to the Maduro regime\u201d, rather than as a legitimate financial investigation.
The Venezuelan ministry of communications and information did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
By 2024, Betancourt was involved in drilling again in Venezuela, with Nabep, the company he owned at the time with Harry Sargeant, an American oil executive. The company started small, at just 23,000 barrels per day, according to recent statements by Venezuela\u2019s interim president.
In September 2025, Spanish police descended on his castle in connection with a money-laundering investigation, according to Spanish press accounts<\/a>.
But at about that time, officials in the Trump administration were already in touch with Betancourt about the pressure on Venezuela\u2019s government, according to a former official, as well as a businessman who was aware of it. Betancourt\u2019s lawyer wrote that the Spanish investigation \u201chas never resulted in any charge against Mr. Betancourt\u201d. The Guardian was not able to confirm the status of the investigation.
By 3 January, when Maduro was arrested in the US raid, a source who was involved said Betancourt played a crucial role in negotiations with Delcy Rodr\u00edguez. Betancourt\u2019s lawyer wrote to the Guardian that Betancourt functioned as a go-between. \u201cThere was no established channel of trust between Venezuela\u2019s interim government and the United States. Both sides spoke with Mr Betancourt, because each knew him and each was prepared to rely on him, and he facilitated communications between them.\u201d
What many people familiar with Venezuela\u2019s recent history question is why the US government is going into business with Betancourt given his substantial baggage.
\u201cThe only discernible winner in any of this is Betancourt,\u201d said a businessman who has spent years on Venezuelan issues.
For Trump, the issue is simple. \u201cIt was a war, but it\u2019s perhaps the biggest deal ever made,\u201d he told the United Nations this week. \u201cTo the victor belong the spoils. You\u2019ve all heard that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The US\u2019s oil deal with Venezuela faces multiple legal and logistical problems, including questions about whether it can be implemented Donald Trump has long coveted the oilfields of other nations and declared an agreement with Venezuela to be \u201cthe biggest oil deal in world history\u201d. But the agreement, reached after the US seized Venezuelan president […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}