President Trump announced last week that the U.S. would team up with a Venezuelan company to pump oil from a large swath of the South American nation's reserves — but actually getting that petroleum out of the ground could come with…
Page F4From§Eachthe milkman edition — 1 September 2026
Trump touts US control of large slice of Venezuela's oil; officials admit hurdles remain before any oil arrives.
As it ran on the front
Let's run the numbers as reported, because the numbers as reported don't quite reconcile with each other. On one line of the ledger: the President says the United States has control of a large slice of Venezuela's oil. On the next line, filed the same week, by the same outlets: political, logistical hurdles stand between the US and any of it. Those are two entries for the same asset, and they don't match, hon.
Control, as a word, usually means possession. You can borrow against it, insure it, sell futures on it. Hurdles, as a word, usually means you don't have it yet. The filing doesn't say which hurdles — political or logistical — get cleared first, or by whom, or what it costs to clear them. That's a gap. We don't know its size yet, because nobody's published an invoice.…
…(cont) Here's what we can reconcile. There's a new oil deal with Venezuela, publicly touted, publicly explained in a 'what to know' piece the same week the President said the slice was already ours. Normally when you own a slice of something, you don't need a hurdles list to go with it. You need a hurdles list when you're describing something you're trying to get, dressed in the grammar of something you've already got.
That gap — between 'we have control' and 'hurdles stand between us and the oil' — is the kind of gap that shows up in a column with a name on it eventually. Might be a shipping contract. Might be a security arrangement with a line item nobody wants to read aloud at a hearing. Might be nothing. We don't know yet, because the receipts don't say. What the receipts do say is that somebody announced ownership of an asset before the paperwork on the asset existed, and that the announcement ran in the same week as the paperwork's absence.
In my experience, when the ownership claim outruns the ownership, the difference gets made up somewhere. Sometimes it's a subsidy. Sometimes it's a military footprint nobody budgeted a line for. Sometimes it's just time — years of 'hurdles' standing between the announcement and the thing, while the announcement keeps getting repeated like it already happened. We'll keep the ledger open. That's the job.
“They tell you 'we have control' like it's already in the tank, then in the same breath admit there's hurdles standing between here and there. That gap is where the invoice always shows up later, and it never lands on the people who announced it.”
“This is a historic deal opening new energy partnerships — sure there are logistical details still being finalized, that's normal for any major agreement. Did I say 'control'? I meant 'access.' Access is the word I meant.”
The receipts
President Trump is downplaying concerns about a new oil reserve agreement with Venezuela that experts say could take years to get up and running. CBS News' Lilia Luciano has more.
{beacon} Energy & Environment Energy & Environment The Big Story Trump: U.S. has control of large slice of Venezuela's oil President Trump said Friday evening that there will be “majority U.S. control” of a large swath of Venezuela’s oil…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.