The Trump administration's plan to take a stake in tens of billions of barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves will hinge on a private company called North American Blue Energy Partners, the White House announced Monday.
Page F2From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 1 September 2026
The Pentagon's new business in Venezuelan oil runs through a company called North American Blue Energy Partners.
As it ran on the front
Let's run the filing against the table, hon. The story here is a U.S.-Venezuela oil deal, and the deal runs through a company called North American Blue Energy Partners. Fine. Companies have names. But the other filing on the desk this week describes how the Pentagon - the Department of Defense, the one with the aircraft carriers - is getting into the Venezuelan oil business under this administration. Two documents, same subject, and one of them has 'Defense' in the letterhead.
I checked whether there's a State Department deal here with a defense contractor riding along for security, the way these things sometimes work. That's not what the filing shows. The filing shows the Pentagon itself moving into the oil business, with the partner named as North American Blue Energy Partners. When the department that operates thirteen aircraft carrier strike groups - eleven, my mistake, eleven - starts appearing as a party in an energy deal, I don't reconcile that under 'diplomacy.' I reconcile it under 'business line.'…
…(cont) Now, ordinarily, when a government wants oil from a country it has had a complicated relationship with, that runs through Commerce, or State, or a private consortium with a security detail. Here the security detail is the whole department. That's a different column in the ledger. That's not a hedge against instability, that's the instability wearing a corporate name on its business card.
I don't have a dollar figure yet on North American Blue Energy Partners - the filing doesn't list one - so I can't tell you the size of the gap between what this is called and what it is. But I can tell you where deals like this tend to land, historically: on a balance sheet somewhere far from the people paying for the arrangement and far closer to the people who get the barrels.
In lieu of a line item explaining exactly what 'getting into the oil business' means, taxpayers are owed the invoice. That's not an editorial position. That's just where the receipts point, every time somebody in a uniform starts talking about energy partnerships instead of appropriations.
“Follow the money and it runs through the Pentagon now, not just the State Department - that's not diplomacy, that's a defense department with an oil lease. When the guys with the aircraft carriers start booking barrels, you don't call that policy, you call that a hostile takeover with better PR.”
“This is a straightforward energy partnership, nothing military about it - well, the Pentagon's involved, sure, but that's just... logistics support. Energy security. National security and energy security, those are basically the same department now, is what I'm learning as I say this out loud.”
The receipts
The Defense Department’s Office of Strategic Capital, founded by the Biden administration to give loans to bolster the U.S. defense industry, is helping lead President Trump’s oil deal.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.