Venezuela’s acting president says nearly $76 billion in oil investment is about to flow into the country over the next five years, the latest and loudest signal that Caracas is throwing open an industry that spent the better part of a decade withering under sanctions and mismanagement.
Delcy Rodríguez made the announcement on national television on Saturday, outlining a package that includes a bilateral accord with the United States covering 17 oil fields and plans to drill 250 rigs. The energy deal, she said, is part of a broader bundle of 61 agreements signed between the two countries.
“Major investments are coming,” Rodríguez said. “We are talking about investment of almost $76 billion over five years. Those investments will translate into direct benefits for our country in a win-win partnership, because our partner will also benefit.”
She pointed to the western state of Zulia — once the engine room of Venezuela’s oil industry — as an early proof of concept. Crude production there, she said, has risen from 70,000 barrels per day to 370,000, and could reach 400,000 barrels per day by the end of the year. She did not say over what period the increase occurred.
For readers outside the Americas: Venezuela is an OPEC member and holds the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves, estimated at about 303 billion barrels. But its output has collapsed far below levels seen a decade ago, the result of years of underinvestment, chronic operational problems at the state oil company PDVSA, and US sanctions on the energy sector. Delcy Rodríguez is running the country as acting president following the ouster of longtime leader Nicolás Maduro in January, after which Caracas has been reopening its energy sector to foreign investment with the backing of US President Donald Trump’s administration.
A follow-up to the August handshake
Rodríguez’s figures build on an agreement announced in August that Trump called the “biggest oil deal in history.” Under that arrangement, 17 strategic oil fields with an estimated 65 billion barrels of reserves — about a fifth of Venezuela’s total — would be developed with a production target of more than 1.5 million barrels a day. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the deal “a huge win for both the American and Venezuelan people,” saying it would bring nearly $100 billion in private investment and support reconstruction of Venezuela’s economy.
The structure is unusual: the United States effectively holds a majority output stake in a new venture with an unnamed private operator, while Caracas insists it retains ownership and sovereignty over the resources themselves. In an earlier televised address, Rodríguez put Venezuela’s take at roughly $19 for every barrel produced and sold at a $65 benchmark price — projecting more than $209 billion in tax revenue for the state over the life of the contract.
Reasons to be cautious about the headline numbers
$76 billion is a staggering figure, and it deserves scrutiny. Venezuela’s government has a long record of announcing grand investment targets that arrive slowly, partially, or not at all. The Zulia production claim — a fivefold increase with no stated timeframe — should be read with that history in mind, as should the end-of-year target of 400,000 barrels a day.
There are also open questions the announcement did not answer: which companies are committing the capital, on what timeline the 250 rigs will actually be deployed, and what happens if global oil prices — the math behind every dollar figure quoted — move against the projects. Rodríguez’s office released no contract documents.
It is also worth remembering that this détente is recent. Just days before the latest announcement, Trump signed an executive order waiving a raft of Russia sanctions days before they were to take effect — part of a broader reshaping of how Washington uses energy as leverage, from a diesel deal struck with Moscow to the waiver of a sanctions bill that would have hit Russian crude buyers. Venezuela is now the clearest beneficiary of that shift.
Why this matters beyond Venezuela
Oil prices are set globally, and a meaningful revival of Venezuelan production would add real barrels to a market currently jittery about supply — from Iranian tensions to the war in Ukraine. For drivers in the United States, where gasoline averaged about $4.09 a gallon this month, more Venezuelan crude is precisely the kind of supply Trump says could bring pump prices down. For OPEC, a re-engaged Venezuela complicates the cartel’s production math. And for Latin America, the spectacle of the US government taking an effective majority stake in another country’s oil venture sets a precedent that the region will be debating for years.
The barrels are not flowing yet. But after years in which Venezuela’s oil story was one of collapse, Saturday’s announcement is the most concrete claim yet that the country is back in the business of selling the world its crude.
