The U.S. has struck a deal to take majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s oil reserves, nine months after the U.S. military abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in a raid on Caracas and two months after The New York Times revealed that U.S.
Page F2From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 7 September 2026
U.S. claims 'majority control' of Venezuela's oil with a 35 percent stake
As it ran on the front
On August 28th, analysts asked Congress to stop what the administration was still calling talks. Officials said conversations between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Venezuelan government would secure "America's energy future for generations to come." Analysts called the push colonial. Congress was called on to intervene.
Four days later, on September 1st, the talks had a shape. Democracy Now put a number on it: majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela's oil reserves. The report noted this arrived nine months after the U.S. military removed President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from Caracas in a raid, and two months after reporting that Rubio had become the country's de facto viceroy — running its finances, its resources, its government. The headline asked whether to file the deal as the biggest oil deal on record or theft at gunpoint.…
…(cont) The Hill, that same evening, ran the paperwork. The Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital — a Defense Department office — is taking a 35 percent equity stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, Venezuela's second-largest private oil producer. The story is sourced to a press release and reads like every other oil-deal story The Hill has ever run.
Here is the reconciliation, hon. Thirty-five percent of one private company is not, on its own, majority control of a nation's reserves. The distance between those two figures — a minority stake in a producer, and majority control of the ground under it — is exactly the size of the gap between "routine deal" and "theft at gunpoint." Both descriptions sit on the same press release. Only one of them required that a sitting president be taken from his home first.
On September 7th, National Review filed its objection: undermining the rule of law and a relatively free market will have long-term ramifications. The rule of law in question governs a reserve that changed hands nine months after that raid. The free market in question is the one a Pentagon office just bought 35 percent of.
Three ledgers, one filing. Congress's is titled grift. Democracy Now's is titled gunpoint. The Hill's is titled routine, and runs the same numbers as the other two. The gap between "35 percent" and "majority control" isn't a rounding error — it's the space where the word "theft" goes, if you're the one it happened to, and doesn't, if you're the one holding the deed.
“They said thirty-five percent and called it a majority — that's not accounting, that's a guy telling you he owns your car because he's got the keys. And the part nobody's arguing about is the part that should scare you: they took the country's president out of his house first, then wrote the contract. That's not a business deal, that's a stickup with a press release attached.”
“"It's not a takeover, it's a strategic capital partnership — historic, actually, for both economies. Thirty-five percent isn't a majority, that's just an anchor investment, a floor, it's evolving. Look, the press release speaks for itself. Did I say the release speaks for itself? That doesn't sound like me."”
The receipts
Undermining the rule of law and a relatively free market will have long-term ramifications.
· 'Yet Another Trump Grift': Congress Called to Stop US Takeover of Venezuelan Oil Fields from the morgue, 28 Aug 2026
· Trump administration unveils additional details in Venezuela oil deal from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.