CARACAS, Venezuela — Five energy companies signed deals with Venezuela to rapidly increase oil and gas drilling, with some new wells expected to start as soon as this week, adding to the Trump administration’s efforts to increase production in the South American country. Representatives with Chevron, Eni, GE Vernova, Primavera, and…
Page A2From§Eachthe matinee edition — 2 September 2026
Trump's 'majority U.S. control' of Venezuela's oil turns out to be Chevron, GE, and Eni
As it ran on the front
On Friday, August 28th, the president posted the news himself, in the register he reserves for things that are actually good: BREAKING NEWS, biggest oil deal in world history, 65 billion barrels, majority U.S. control, at no cost to the American taxpayer. Two days later he specified what the control was for — the barrels, he said, would go straight into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, drained under the last guy, 'topped out' as a gift from Venezuela to the American people. That is the version of the story where a country's ground gets signed over to a country. It lasted five days.
By Wednesday the paperwork had names on it, and the names were not 'the United States.' Chevron. GE Vernova. Eni. Primavera. Aspect Energy. Five companies, not one government, put signatures on leases to drill starting as soon as this week, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright standing in Caracas to shake hands with acting President Delcy Rodríguez and make it official. The 'majority U.S. control' the president announced on Truth Social turned out to mean majority control by five corporations headquartered in the United States — which is a real thing, and a true thing, and not remotely the thing that was announced.…
…(cont) Nobody lied about a fact here, which is what makes it work. Every noun in the boast is defensible: the companies are American, the barrels are large, the deal is signed. What moved, in the five days between the post and the leases, was who 'the American people' turned out to mean. It meant Chevron's shareholders. It meant Eni's. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve — the actual public inventory, the one that's supposed to answer to a Congress and a winter — was never in the paperwork Wright flew down to sign; the paperwork was drilling rights, and drilling rights go into the reserve of whoever's on the lease, priced at whatever the world market says that day.
Jacobin called it a return to Venezuela's colonial past, oil pulled out to serve someone else's balance sheet instead of the nation that sits on top of it, and the timeline doesn't leave much room to argue: the social contract took five business days to get replaced by five corporate ones. The wells start this week. The barrels are already spoken for. The only open question left on the page is whether 'no cost to the American taxpayer' was a promise or just the only part of the sentence nobody bothered to sign.
“He didn't say 'we struck a deal for Chevron to drill in Venezuela,' he said 'majority U.S. control,' because one of those sentences gets you a headline and the other gets you Eni's quarterly earnings call. The reserve he said he was topping off for the American people? Not in the paperwork — the paperwork's five companies and their lawyers. That's not a nationalization, that's a press release wearing a flag while the actual barrels go wherever the market bids highest.”
“Look, American companies drilling American-friendly wells in a country we helped stabilize — that's not colonialism, that's called energy security, and frankly the Strategic Petroleum Reserve language was aspirational, forward-looking, the president likes to think big picture. Did I say the SPR barrels aren't actually in the contract? That's — I'll have someone get back to you on the barrel count.”
The receipts
President Donald Trump was accused of naked gangsterism and revisionist history on Sunday when he announced that Venezuelan oil would be used to refill the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. "One of the things I am going to do with the Venezuelan Oil is fill up the Strategic National Reserves which, because of Sleepy Joe Biden, has been…
President Trump said Friday evening that there will be “majority U.S. control” of a large swath of Venezuela’s oil reserves. “BREAKING NEWS: The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on…
Donald Trump’s backroom deal with Venezuela’s leaders formally gives the US control over the country’s oil. It marks the definitive end of modern Venezuela’s social contract, in which oil production was meant to serve national economic goals.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright is in Venezuela meeting with acting President Delcy Rodríguez to sign a new oil agreement. CBS News' Lilia Luciano reports.
President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he struck a historic oil deal with Venezuela, after wresting power from former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in January. The president said the United States has established “majority”…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.