US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that the United States had struck an agreement with Venezuela giving Washington control over more than 65 billion barrels of the country’s proven oil reserves, in what Trump described as “the biggest oil deal in the history of the world”.
Under the agreement, signed by Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez, a new US-Venezuelan company, in partnership with an unidentified private operator, will receive the right to develop the oilfields for a full 100 years.
Washington, meanwhile, will receive 55 per cent of actual production through a combination of an ownership stake and rights to purchase oil at cost. The agreement was signed in coordination with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Behind the deal’s formal legal structure, however, lies a striking political and legal contradiction involving the person who signed it on Venezuela’s behalf.
Only nine months earlier, Rodríguez had described her own rise to power following a US military operation as the product of a “barbaric” act and an “illegal and illegitimate kidnapping”.
On Saturday, dozens of left-wing protesters marched through the streets of Caracas carrying signs declaring: “We are not a colony, nor a backyard” and “Yankees, go home!”
Who Is Delcy Rodríguez, the Woman Who Signed the Century-Long Deal?
Rodríguez, who served as vice president and minister of finance and petroleum under Nicolás Maduro, became “interim president” by order of Venezuela’s Supreme Court.
Her appointment came just one day after a night-time US military operation in which American special forces detained Maduro in Caracas.
Venezuela’s Constitutional Chamber granted Rodríguez the position “to guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defence of the nation” amid what the ruling described as the president’s “forced absence”.
According to CBS News, citing the Supreme Court ruling, her appointment was originally supposed to last only 90 days, far shorter than the nine months that had actually passed by the time she signed an agreement lasting an entire century.
Rodríguez initially refused to recognise the legitimacy of Maduro’s detention.
In a televised address broadcast by state television, she described the operation as “barbaric”, saying that “what is being done to Venezuela is a brutal act that violates international law”.
She also called Maduro’s detention an “illegal and illegitimate kidnapping” and demanded the “immediate release” of Maduro and his wife.
At the time, Rodríguez insisted that Maduro “remains the only and legitimate president of Venezuela”, even as she herself occupied the position of “interim president” under the same judicial decision.
Power Derived From the Military, Not Elections
Rodríguez’s assumption of power was not based on an electoral mandate.
It also rested on support from the Venezuelan military establishment, with Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López issuing a statement “recognising” her as interim leader and endorsing the Supreme Court decision.
At the same time, the Associated Press quoted US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as saying that Washington did not regard Rodríguez’s government as “legitimate” in the first place, arguing that Venezuela had “never held a free and fair election”.
The official US position therefore treated Rodríguez’s government as illegitimate because of the absence of free and fair elections.
That position did not subsequently prevent the same US administration from signing a century-long agreement with that very government.
Trump’s Direct Threat to Rodríguez
American pressure went beyond questioning the legitimacy of Rodríguez’s government.
Trump directly threatened her if she failed to “fall in line”, warning that she would “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro”.
Trump also demanded that Rodríguez grant Washington “full access” to Venezuela’s oil facilities and essential infrastructure, including roads, for the stated purpose of rebuilding them.
Against that backdrop of pressure, Rodríguez’s tone changed within a single day, according to the Associated Press.
She posted a conciliatory message on Instagram expressing hope for “respectful relations” with Washington and calling on the US administration to “cooperate”.
Rodríguez’s personal history adds another layer of complexity.
She was herself subjected to US sanctions during Trump’s first term over allegations that she had been “undermining democracy” in Venezuela.
The same accusation now forms part of the deeper legal and ethical questions surrounding her signature on an agreement that is presented as an expression of Venezuela’s free sovereign will.
Until the agreement was signed, neither side publicly explained how a government Rubio had described as “illegitimate” because of the absence of free elections had transformed into a fully competent contracting party capable of granting the United States rights over a strategic national resource for an entire century.
Agreement or the Economic Prize of Regime Change?
The circumstances raise a question extending beyond the terms of the oil agreement itself.
When a government is installed through a judicial decision following an external military operation, when the future beneficiary of an agreement publicly declares that government illegitimate, and when the head of that government is personally threatened with paying a “bigger price” than her detained predecessor unless she accepts particular conditions, can the result genuinely be considered an “agreement” in the full legal meaning of the term, which presumes the free consent of two equal parties?
Or is a more accurate description that the economic spoils of a military regime-change operation were subsequently repackaged through the signature of a party whose legitimacy was itself disputed by the American beneficiary, transforming the outcome into a formal contract that provides legal cover and could make future challenges considerably more difficult?
Ricardo Hausmann, Venezuela’s former planning minister and a professor of economics at Harvard University, wrote on X that any agreement transferring control over the country’s oil reserves to the United States would represent a “catastrophic failure for all parties involved”, because the Venezuelan government “does not have the legitimacy to enter into this unconstitutional deal”.
Hausmann, an opponent of the current government and supporter of opposition leader María Corina Machado, added: “Venezuelans will not honour this illegitimate deal, and no major US oil company will take it seriously because they know it will not last.”
He maintained that Rodríguez “does not have the legitimacy or constitutional authority to bind Venezuela to any deal of this kind”.
According to the Associated Press, some Venezuelans viewed the agreement as a betrayal of what their government had repeatedly declared for decades: Venezuela’s resources belong to Venezuela, and the country’s leaders would not allow the US government access to them.
Rafael Ramírez, the former head of Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, went further.
Writing on X, he accused the Rodríguez administration of betrayal, saying it “will certainly go down in history as a traitor and as an accomplice in opening the doors to the new colonialism of the United States of America”.
“They are handing 65 billion barrels of our reserves to the United States,” he added. “We said it a long time ago: they would sell the country to stay in power.”
